Prevention and control
“This pneumonia is caused by neither a bacterium nor a virus,” Li Tongzeng, chief physician of the respiratory and infectious diseases department at Beijing YouAn Hospital, told Beijing Television. “It is an atypical pathogen and requires different treatment. Cold or flu medicine won’t work. But it is also not recommended to take walking pneumonia meds before making sure you are infected, because this can contribute to drug resistance.”
“It’s a dilemma for parents,” a 39-year-old mother surnamed Zhu told Beijing Review. “We have to make the right diagnosis and get the right medicine for our children, but neither is easy.”
Adults are not immune to this infection either. “It is common to see coughing kids being accompanied by coughing parents,” Zhu said. At some hospitals, patients who require an intravenous drip choose to go outside and hang the bottle from tree branches in the hospital courtyard.
“This way, we can get some fresh air and, at the same time, avoid other infections roaming the hospital ward as much as possible,” one patient at a hospital in Handan, Hebei Province in north China, said on Douyin, a short-video platform in China.
To date, this disease has no vaccine. It is not classified as a national notifiable infectious disease and its pathogenic mechanism is not yet fully understood.
“People shouldn’t be too worried about the infection because most patients are back to normal within three weeks,” said Ren Xiaofeng, a doctor at Jintai Hospital in Baoji, Shaanxi Province.
As the mercury gradually drops, there is also growing concern about the increasing risk of a possible outbreak of COVID-19 and the combination of the two this winter.
Liu Chuan, a doctor from the First Affiliated Hospital of Zhengzhou University in Henan Province, told Henan Daily that this concern was “overly anxious.”
“Walking pneumonia affects children more and its peak may come in November; COVID-19 affects more seniors and its peak, if any this year, will occur later,” Zhuang said. “It is necessary to strengthen personal protective measures such as wearing masks, washing hands and social distancing to reduce the risk of infection.”