5 questions about the latest disease outbreak in China

Key Facts

Still, last week’s demand by the World Health Organization for information from China on “reported clusters of pneumonia in children in Northern China” reminded the world of the start of the pandemic nearly four years ago, and triggered anxiety that a new pathogen may again cause a global outbreak.
The term “immunity debt” gained traction to describe it, and China might now be paying back its debt on a delayed schedule — the result of maintaining Covid lockdowns longer than other countries.
“A large portion of the population probably is lacking immunity and haven’t gotten infected with a number of other pathogens, and what we’re seeing now is a burst of all these people in one year are getting infected,” said Andrew Pekosz, an immunology professor at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
The likelihood of the outbreak spreading to the U.S. this year is also low because the country paid its “debt” for illnesses like RSV last year, Adalja said.