US Asia ambassador breaks diplomatic ranks and says there are still ‘serious questions’ about China’s mysterious child pneumonia outbreak

A US ambassador has broken diplomatic ranks and called on China to stop the “deception” and be transparent about a new disease outbreak.

Chinese hospitals in a number of cities have been “overwhelmed” by a spike in pneumonia among children that began in May but has not been reported to international authorities until now.

In an unusual move that raised questions about transparency, the World Health Organization (WHO) earlier this week issued a public call for China to hand over health records.

Chinese authorities said Thursday they have no evidence of “unusual or new” pathogens and that the influx of respiratory illnesses was due to common infections rebounding after the country’s brutal lockdowns.

Last night, Rahm Emanuel, the US ambassador to Japan, said there were still “serious questions” about the outbreak.

Chinese officials have insisted that no new pathogen is to blame, instead blaming a rise in common winter bugs as the country faces its first full winter without anti-Covid measures.

In a tweet on

“It is time to leave Covid deceptions and delays behind as transparent and timely information saves lives. Full cooperation with the international community is not an option; it is a public health necessity. Will Beijing go a step further?’

Doctors and health authorities in China believe that Covid, RSV, influenza and mycoplasma pneumoniae, a common bacterial disease also known as ‘walking pneumonia’, are responsible for the surge.

They claim these diseases cause more severe illness because children’s immunity was weakened during the country’s strict lockdowns – not much different from what happened in the US and Britain last year.

But doubts remain about China’s transparency, with many pointing to the eerie similarities between this outbreak and the early weeks of the Covid crisis.

China covered up the original SARS epidemic in 2003 and the delay in reporting Covid in late 2019 left countries flat-footed in their response.

Local media reported earlier this week that hospitals in Beijing and 800 kilometers northeast of Liaoning were “overwhelmed by sick children” with unusual symptoms, including inflammation of the lungs and high fever, but no cough.

The situation prompted an alert from ProMed – a disease surveillance system that also raised the alarm in the final days of 2019 about a mysterious infection in Wuhan, which would later evolve into the global Covid pandemic.

After issuing an unusual “official request” for more information, the WHO said Thursday it had spoken to officials from the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention and the Beijing Children’s Hospital.

The data submitted suggested that there had been an increase in cases of Mycoplasma pneumoniae pneumonia since May, and of RSV, adenovirus and influenza since October.

The WHO said in a statement: “Chinese authorities have advised that no unusual or novel pathogens or unusual clinical presentations have been detected.”

Hospitals in Beijing and nearly 500 miles northeast of Liaoning are among those ‘overwhelmed by sick children,’ according to local news reports

It added: “Some of these increases are occurring earlier in the season than historically, but not unexpected given the lifting of COVID-19 restrictions, as is also being experienced in other countries,” the WHO said in a statement.

‘No changes in disease presentation have been reported by Chinese health authorities.’

The statement noted: “They further stated that the increase in respiratory diseases has not caused the patient load to exceed hospital capacity.”