Health warning after ‘white lung’ syndrome outbreak reported in Ohio children
***Editor’s Note: This story has been corrected to state that the outbreak is in Southwest Ohio.***
WARREN COUNTY, Ohio (WJW) – A health warning has been issued for parents in parts of Ohio as an extremely high number of pneumonia cases in children are being reported.
Right now, the illness, called “white lung” pneumonia, is reported in Southern Ohio, but the illness is not guaranteed to stay there.
The Warren County Health District says the number of pediatric pneumonia cases meets the Ohio Department of Health’s definition of an outbreak.
So far, there are no cases reported in Cuyahoga County or anywhere in Northeast Ohio and local health officials hope to keep it that way.
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Since August, doctors in Warren County say they have seen a surge in respiratory illnesses among children, averaging around eight years old.
There have been 142 reported cases of pediatric pneumonia, which is way above average, according to the Warren County Health District.
Symptoms include trouble breathing, a severe cough and a high uncontrollable fever.
“Those symptoms are lasting more than five to seven days, you certainly want to get them checked out as well. Emergency room might not be the right place to go in that situation. You want to bring them in to their pediatrician, family physician,” said Dr. Joseph Allen, regional medical director of Premier Health.
“In the example of Warren County, they have not seen any specific patterns that fit together to say that this is an outbreak that is linked,” said Dr. Prakash Ganesh, medical director for the Cuyahoga County Board of Health.
Dr. Ganesh says he believes the pediatric pneumonia cases in Southern Ohio are confined to that area right now. But he says just as we learned with COVID-19 and other diseases, people travel around and could spread it to other places.
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“There are a lot of surveillance systems that are in place that we keep a close eye on. We are always, especially during the respiratory illness season, looking at respiratory illnesses,” said Dr. Ganesh.
Dr. Ganesh and Warren County health officials say the pneumonia kids are getting in the Miami Valley is not a new type of disease.
It can be very mild to pretty severe, and it’s sometime tough to determine which respiratory illness a child might have, including RSV, COVID or the flu.
“With pneumonia, we’re worried about breathing faster than normal, productive cough, where you’re producing mucus with that cough, trouble breathing, where you might see retractions of the chest wall of the child or flaring of the nostrils,” Ganesh said.
A similar illness has been reported among children in Massachusetts. Health officials say it’s similar to an outbreak spreading in China and parts of Europe.
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