In a press release Wednesday, Warren County Health District (WCHD) officials in Ohio announced an “extremely high” 142 pediatric cases of pneumonia since August. They noted that, “Not only is this above the county average, it also meets the Ohio Department of Health definition of an outbreak.” The average age for the recorded cases of pediatric pneumonia is eight years old, and the outbreak has spread through multiple school districts, according to the WCHD.
The rise in pneumonia cases in Ohio is similar to the rise in cases being reported in China. The World Health Organization reports that the pediatric pneumonia cases in China are not due to novel disease. This is the first winter without pandemic restrictions in China since the Covid-19 outbreak in Wuhan in late 2019, and could be a result of immunity debt, according to Francois Balloux, a computational biologist at University College London.
The WCHD said they do not believe their outbreak is a result of a novel respiratory disease, either, with “Mycoplasma pneumoniae, Streptococcus pneumoniae and Adenovirus” being among the pathogens recovered. The health department recommended using caution at holiday gatherings, and stated that they are working with the Ohio Department of Health to determine a cause.
