Experts say a pneumonia outbreak among children in Ohio and a cluster of pneumonia cases in China are unrelated, despite some social media posts and tabloid articles that have ambiguously linked the two.
The usual respiratory pathogens are making their rounds this cold and flu season, yet the specter of the pandemic has left many on alert for the next novel agent.
“I understand outbreaks in China can make people nervous, but this is not that,” says Paul Offit, an infectious disease physician at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. Although another global illness may emerge in the future, the current pneumonia reports are “nothing to worry about,” he adds.
Many pathogens that circulate in the Northern Hemisphere’s winter and year-round—including flu, respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) and now COVID—are far from benign and can lead to pneumonia in some cases. But experts say there is no reason to panic or interpret the current uptick in illnesses as anything other than the typical circulation of respiratory viruses and bacteria.
These are “just everyday pathogens that normally increase during the winter having a somewhat early and very assertive increase at the present time,” says William Schaffner, an infectious disease physician and a professor at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. But people are not helpless against these germs, says Rama Thyagarajan, an infectious disease and internal medicine physician at the University of Texas at Austin Dell Medical School. COVID, the flu and RSV all have vaccines that can reduce the risk of pneumonia, she says.