WORLD Health Organisation officials are probing a mystery pneumonia sweeping through schools in China sparking fears of a new pandemic.
Hospitals in Beijing are reportedly "overwhelmed with sick children" who have symptoms such as inflammation in the lungs and a high fever but no cough.
A similar situation is developing in Liaoning – almost 500 miles from Beijing.
Officials have reported an increase in "influenza-like illness" since mid-October when compared to the same period in the last three years, the WHO said.
The UN health agency is now asking for "detailed" information on the epidemic.
"WHO has made an official request to China for detailed information on an increase in respiratory illnesses and reported clusters of pneumonia in children," it said.
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ProMed – a system that monitors global disease outbreaks and was one of the first groups to identify the dangers of Covid – issued a warning on Tuesday.
ProMed was one of the first groups to raise questions in 2019 about an unknown illness circulating in Wuhan that later became Covid.
A Beijing citizen ProMed identified only as Mr W, said: "Many, many are hospitalised. They don't cough and have no symptoms.
"They just have a high temperature and many develop pulmonary nodules."
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Dr Jennifer Nuzzo, an epidemiologist and director of the Pandemic Center at Brown University School of Public Health, said the news was "alarming".
"Seeing an increased number of people presenting at any hospital is, of course, alarming," she told Mail Online.
'It may not be out of the ordinary… but any time we see people going to the hospital, we have reason to be concerned about it."
Dr Krutika Kuppalli, an infectious disease doctor from WHO's Health Emergencies Programme, said testing and making the results public was vital – adding the illness "could be anything".
"We need more information about symptoms, epidemiology and what has been tested," she said.
Taiwanese outlet FTV News said hospitals were being "overwhelmed" with sick children.
And "parents questioned whether the authorities were covering up the epidemic", it claimed.
The Beijing Center for Disease Control and Prevention said it had more than 3,500 cases of "respiratory infection" at the city's children's hospital at the start of October, according to Radio Free Asia.
A staff member at the Beijing Friendship Hospital said there is a 24-hour wait for emergency cases to be seen.
"The calls coming in today won't get seen until tomorrow… we're taking more than 1,000 calls a day," the worker said.
Dr Neil Stone, an infectious diseases specialist doctor at UCLH in London, said he dismissed reports of an "undiagnosed pneumonia" in China in December 2019 as "no big deal".
"Not making that same mistake again," he said.
Chinese authorities from the National Health Commission held a meeting on November 13 to report an increase in the respiratory disease.
They told reporters the respiratory illness spike was due to the lifting of Covid restrictions and the circulation of known pathogens, namely influenza and common bacterial infections that affect children.
China's capital Beijing is currently experiencing a cold snap – with temperatures expected to plummet to well below zero by Friday, state media said.
Wang Quanyi, deputy director and chief epidemiological expert at the Beijing Center for Disease Control and Prevention, said the city has "entered a high incidence season of respiratory infectious diseases".
Beijing "is showing a trend of multiple pathogens co-existing", he added.
At Beijing's Capital Institute of Pediatrics' Children's Hospital, crowds of parents and children were seen dressed in winter clothes.
A parent said her coughing nine-year-old son was sick with mycoplasma pneumonia – a pathogen that can cause sore throats, fatigue and fever.
"There are really a lot of children who have caught it recently," she said. "Of course that worries me."
Li Meiling, 42, brought her eight-year-old daughter to the hospital, who she said was suffering from the same type of pneumonia.
"A lot of children her age are ill with this at the moment," she said.
Dr Hua Shaodong, a paediatrician at the Beijing Children’s Hospital, told China Daily: "There is a steady number of patients developing severe cases, but there are very few critical cases, and there are no related deaths so far.
"The average days in [the] hospital for hospitalised patients is around seven to 14 days."
On November 21, ProMed issued an alert on clusters of undiagnosed pneumonia in children in northern China.
The WHO said it was unclear if ProMed's report was related to the authorities' press conference and it was seeking clarification.
The agency urged people to take preventative measures, including getting vaccinated, keeping distance from sick people and wearing masks.
The WHO gave no indication of China's response to the request for more information.
Throughout the Covid pandemic, the WHO slammed the Chinese authorities for their lack of transparency and cooperation.
More than three years after cases were first detected in Wuhan, heated debate still rages around the origins of Covid.
Scientists are divided between two main theories of the cause – an escape from a laboratory in the city where such viruses were being studied and an animal that infected people at a local market.
Earlier this year, WHO experts said they were convinced that Beijing had far more data that could shed light on the origins of Covid – and called it a "moral imperative" for the information to be shared.
A team of specialists led by the WHO and accompanied by Chinese colleagues investigated China in early 2021.
But no team has been able to return to the country since and WHO officials have repeatedly asked for more data and information.
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