Children fill hospitals in China with respiratory illnesses

Hospitals across China are filling up with patients, mainly children, suffering from respiratory illnesses – state media reported this week that one children’s hospital in Beijing was seeing up to 9,378 patients a day and had reached full capacity over the past two months. The outbreaks do not seem to be caused by a new virus, but an overload of illnesses including flu and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) that young people are catching at once after years of strict Covid-19 lockdowns. China was one of the last countries to end pandemic restrictions in January. Two points to note: first, China’s neighbours aren’t taking any chances. The Telegraph reports that India, Nepal, Taiwan and Thailand have put doctors on alert. Second: China faces another serious problem, as Annie Sparrow writes in Foreign Policy: a rise in antibiotic-resistant bacterial infections, which is leading to more pneumonia cases. Antibiotics are available over the counter in China, where antibiotic consumption per person is ten times higher than in the United States.