China’s Ministry of Education issued a directive on Tuesday for its schools to “enhance the awareness of daily protection and health monitoring” in response to an ongoing surge in child pneumonia cases nationwide, appearing to most severely affect Beijing and northeast China.
The Chinese Communist Party has insisted since late November, when reports of overcrowded hospitals and concerns of insufficient medical resources began surfacing, that the increase in such cases was a result of the spread of several known diseases – such as influenza and pathogens that cause common colds, such as adenovirus and rhinovirus – and not any new illnesses.
China’s Global Times, a state propaganda outlet, once again reported on Tuesday that the Party has no evidence of the discovery of a novel pathogen and listed the aforementioned viruses alongside respiratory syncytial virus…
