- As India's Bollywood shifts, stars and snappers click
- Mystery drones won't interfere with Santa's work: US tracker
- Djokovic eyes more Slam glory as Swiatek returns under doping cloud
- Australia's in-form Head confirmed fit for Boxing Day Test
- Brazilian midfielder Oscar returns to Sao Paulo
- 'Wemby' and 'Ant-Man' to make NBA Christmas debuts
- US agency focused on foreign disinformation shuts down
- On Christmas Eve, Pope Francis launches holy Jubilee year
- 'Like a dream': AFP photographer's return to Syria
- Chiefs seek top seed in holiday test for playoff-bound NFL teams
- Panamanians protest 'public enemy' Trump's canal threat
- Cyclone death toll in Mayotte rises to 39
- Ecuador vice president says Noboa seeking her 'banishment'
- Leicester boss Van Nistelrooy aware of 'bigger picture' as Liverpool await
- Syria authorities say armed groups have agreed to disband
- Maresca expects Man City to be in title hunt as he downplays Chelsea's chancs
- South Africa opt for all-pace attack against Pakistan
- Guardiola adamant Man City slump not all about Haaland
- Global stocks mostly higher in thin pre-Christmas trade
- Bethlehem marks sombre Christmas under shadow of war
- 11 killed in blast at Turkey explosives plant
- Indonesia considers parole for ex-terror chiefs: official
- Postecoglou says Spurs 'need to reinforce' in transfer window
- Le Pen says days of new French govt numbered
- Villa boss Emery set for 'very difficult' clash with Newcastle
- Investors swoop in to save German flying taxi startup
- How Finnish youth learn to spot disinformation
- 12 killed in blast at Turkey explosives plant
- Panama leaders past and present reject Trump's threat of Canal takeover
- Hong Kong police issue fresh bounties for activists overseas
- Saving the mysterious African manatee at Cameroon hotspot
- India consider second spinner for Boxing Day Test
- London wall illuminates Covid's enduring pain at Christmas
- Poyet appointed manager at South Korea's Jeonbuk
- South Korea's opposition vows to impeach acting president
- The tsunami detection buoys safeguarding lives in Thailand
- Teen Konstas to open for Australia in Boxing Day India Test
- Asian stocks mostly up after US tech rally
- US panel could not reach consensus on US-Japan steel deal: Nippon
- The real-life violence that inspired South Korea's 'Squid Game'
- Blogs to Bluesky: social media shifts responses after 2004 tsunami
- Tennis power couple de Minaur and Boulter get engaged
- Supermaxi yachts eye record in gruelling Sydney-Hobart race
- Hawaii's Kilauea volcano erupts, spewing columns of lava
- El Salvador Congress votes to end ban on metal mining
- Five things to know about Panama Canal, in Trump's sights
- NBA fines Minnesota guard Edwards $75,000 for outburst
- Haitians massacred for practicing voodoo were abducted, hacked to death: UN
- Inter beat Como to keep in touch with leaders Atalanta
- Man Utd boss Amorim questions 'choices' of Rashford's entourage
China reports no 'unusual or novel pathogens' in respiratory illnesses upsurge
China has reported no 'unusual or novel pathogens' in respiratory illnesses spreading in the north of the country, the World Health Organization said Thursday.
Northern China has recorded an increase in "influenza-like illness" since mid-October when compared to the same period in the previous three years, said the WHO, which had requested more information on the situation.
China's National Health Commission told reporters last week that the respiratory illness spike was due to the lifting of Covid-19 restrictions and the circulation of known pathogens, namely influenza and common bacterial infections that affect children, including mycoplasma pneumonia.
The WHO said Thursday that Chinese authorities had responded, advising "that there has been no detection of any unusual or novel pathogens or unusual clinical presentations, including in Beijing and Liaoning."
It was a matter, the authorities said, of the "aforementioned general increase in respiratory illnesses due to multiple known pathogens."
The Chinese capital of Beijing, located in the north of the country, is currently experiencing a cold snap, with temperatures expected to plummet to well below zero by Friday, state media said.
The city has "entered a high incidence season of respiratory infectious diseases", Wang Quanyi, deputy director and chief epidemiological expert at the Beijing Center for Disease Control and Prevention, told state media.
Beijing "is currently showing a trend of multiple pathogens coexisting", he added.
- 'Due to the season' -
At the children's hospital of Beijing's Capital Institute of Pediatrics on Thursday, AFP journalists saw crowds of parents and children dressed in winter clothes.
A parent surnamed Zhang accompanied her coughing nine-year-old son and said he had fallen ill with mycoplasma pneumonia -- a pathogen that can cause a sore throat, 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, had brought her eight-year-old daughter, who she said was suffering from the same type of pneumonia.
"It's true that a lot of children her age are ill with this at the moment," she told AFP.
But she also thought it was "normal that there are more cases of respiratory illnesses. It's due to the season."
The WHO has urged people to take preventative measures, including getting vaccinated, keeping distance from sick people and wearing masks.
- Calls for transparency -
Over the course of the Covid-19 pandemic, the WHO repeatedly criticised 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-19.
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 intermediate animal that infected people at a local market.
Earlier this year, WHO experts said they were sure 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 there has not been a team able to return since and WHO officials have repeatedly asked for additional data.
WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has stressed that getting to the bottom of the mystery could help avert future pandemics.
S.Caetano--PC