NSW experiencing epidemic of mycoplasma strain in kids

There's an increasing number of children with pneumonia presenting at New South Wales hospitals.

Transcript

00:00It causes a slightly more mild pneumonia than the other bacterial causes that we normally

00:08get.

00:09But at the moment, there's a lot of children presenting to GPs, there's a lot of children

00:13presenting to emergency departments with pneumonia.

00:17And what it looks like in most of those kids is a typical respiratory infection, maybe

00:21with some fever and muscle aches, and then a cough, sometimes a wheeze, and the cough

00:25and wheeze can last for a number of weeks in those children.

00:29So what we really want to emphasise at the moment is that now's the time for everybody

00:33to get back into those good behaviours around preventing transmission of respiratory infections,

00:39things like cough etiquette, washing your hands, good hygiene, maybe in crowded circumstances

00:45to think about mask wearing, and just to be aware that we're coming into winter, this

00:53is around, but we're also going to see viral causes of respiratory tract infections coming

00:58on board in the coming weeks as well.

01:00One of the things that's common with this bacteria is it tends to affect school-aged

01:07children rather than preschool children, so that is maybe not what many community people

01:12would expect, and we are seeing four or five times the levels of this type of pneumonia

01:19presenting than we would otherwise see at this time of year.

01:23But we have had epidemics in the past.

01:25We had one in 2015, we had one in 2019, and in a sense we were due one, and we've known

01:31that this has caused epidemic pneumonia in East Asia and in Europe in the last six months,

01:36so we knew it was coming.

01:37We just really want the community to be aware that it's around, it's a possible cause of

01:42a chest infection in school-aged children, and let's all be aware and do what we can

01:48to prevent transmission.

01:50There's also a lot of patients presenting to GPs with this, but we were expecting a

01:54winter surge of respiratory infections, so the hospitals are coping well, but it is busy.