Surge in Pneumonia Cases in China Has Mainly Resulted in Child Fatalities

Parents with children suffering from respiratory diseases line up at a children's hospital in Chongqing, China, on Nov. 23, 2023. CFOTO/Future Publishing via Getty Images

China’s mysterious pneumonia outbreak further worsened in November and is escalating rapidly. Some Chinese citizens told The Epoch Times that this outbreak primarily results in child fatalities, and the authorities are not reporting it at all.

Severe Outbreak of Childhood Respiratory Diseases

Since October, hospitals across China have been overcrowded due to respiratory diseases, especially in pediatrics departments. Cities like Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai, Dalian, Shenyang, and others are experiencing severe shortages of available beds.

On Dec. 4, the Chinese National Health Commission issued a notice stating that multiple regions in China are currently experiencing overlapping periods of respiratory disease outbreaks. These outbreaks include characteristics of influenza, COVID-19 infections, and mycoplasma pneumonia. The notice acknowledges the overcrowding of hospitals in various locations.

The notice also required grassroots health care institutions to equip the necessary facilities and equipment under the reference standards for diagnosing and treating COVID-19 infections.

On Nov. 22, the World Health Organization formally requested that the Chinese regime provide detailed information on the increase in childhood respiratory diseases and reported cases of pediatric pneumonia clusters.

Concerns about the spread of the so-called “mysterious pneumonia” in China have also prompted several countries to take preventive measures and call on China to be transparent.

Child Deaths

Li Yu (pseudonym), a resident of Dalian, Liaoning Province, told The Epoch Times on Dec. 6 that he had not been infected with COVID-19 for three years, but this time he was not so lucky. He developed symptoms of coughing and occasional fever in recent days. Knowing that hospitals were overcrowded with feverish patients, he decided not to go to the hospital. Instead, he purchased cough suppressants from Thailand online and took them.

“This cold is very severe, even worse than the symptoms I have seen from others during the previous wave of COVID-19 infection. The outbreak is nationwide, and there are no specific medications. You have to endure it on your own, trying various fever-reducing medicines,” he said. “I didn’t get COVID-19 when it was prevalent, but this time, I got it.”

“This time, fewer elderly people are dying; it’s mainly children who are dying,” Mr. Li added. “These deaths are not reported by the media at all.”

Liu Ming (pseudonym), a Taxi driver in Wuhu, Anhui Province, told The Epoch Times on Dec. 3 that many pneumonia patients had progressed to a severe stage with symptoms of white lungs.

“Three children in the Wuhu Normal Affiliated Primary School were found to have ‘white lungs’ and classes were suspended. A doctor said that many children at the school as well as many patients in his hospital have white lungs—about 10 out of 100 patients have white lungs. Some of my colleagues’ children also have white lungs. The doctor said that such conditions will leave long-term effects, and full recovery is out of the question,” Mr. Liu said.

Mr. Chen (first name withheld), who works in the health care industry in Jinzhou, Liaoning province, disclosed that the number of deaths in hospitals has soared, but the information is blocked.

“Don’t believe the official figures. The number of deaths in hospitals is increasing so much that the families of the deceased have begun to queue up [for the necessary procedures],” he said.

COVID Deaths in Previous Outbreaks

The exact number of COVID-19 deaths in China is impossible to determine because of cover-ups by the authorities, but Chinese citizens revealed that they had witnessed many deaths within their social networks.

Ye Hao (pseudonym) is a senior living in Wuhan, where COVID-19 first spread.

In an interview with The Epoch Times on Dec. 5, Mr. Ye said: “At the beginning, a lot of people died in Wuhan. The hospitals were full of patients, and even the corridors were full of people. In the blink of an eye, a patient died. In the blink of an eye, another patient died. What I said is a reality—many people have died.”

He has seen a lot of deaths in his neighborhood as well. In addition, he personally knows of several people who died from COVID-19, some were colleagues, some were neighbors. Some of his relatives have also died because of COVID-19.

Mr. Ye further revealed there was a spike in deaths at the end of last year when the Chinese authorities lifted the zero-COVID policy. He was at his son’s apartment in Shanghai at the time.

“Every night, the sirens of ambulances could be heard constantly, and a lot of elderly people died in Shanghai. I had seen people burning papers and holding ceremonies for the dead in the neighborhoods all the time,” he said.

Mr. Ye also recalled that residents in Wuhan had a tough and miserable life during the strict city-wide lockdown. They had to take a nucleic acid test every day and were constantly living in fear.

In late September, Li Rong, a funeral makeup artist in Anhui Province, told The Epoch Times that during the peak of COVID-19 deaths from December 2022 to February 2023, the corpses in the crematorium were lined up on the street, and the county’s only crematorium operated 24 hours a day.

The county where Ms. Li lives has a population of 1.2 million.