The Min­istry of Health (MoH) has in­di­cat­ed they are ac­tive­ly mon­i­tor­ing the sit­u­a­tion of a rise in res­pi­ra­to­ry dis­eases in Chi­na. 

Through con­sul­ta­tion with the Pan Amer­i­can Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion (PA­HO) and the MoH re­ceived a re­port that stat­ed, “Ac­cord­ing to sur­veil­lance da­ta from Chi­na CDC for the week of 23-29 De­cem­ber 2024, there con­tin­ues to be a rise in acute res­pi­ra­to­ry in­fec­tions, in­clud­ing sea­son­al in­fluen­za, hM­PV, rhi­novirus and ade­n­ovirus. How­ev­er, the over­all scale and in­ten­si­ty of these in­fec­tions re­main low­er than dur­ing the same pe­ri­od last year. A sea­son­al in­crease in res­pi­ra­to­ry pathogens is ex­pect­ed in coun­tries of the north­ern hemi­sphere, par­tic­u­lar­ly dur­ing the win­ter pe­ri­od. On Jan­u­ary 2, through com­mu­ni­ca­tion with the Chi­nese Cen­ter for Dis­ease Con­trol and Pre­ven­tion (Chi­na CDC), it was con­firmed that there is no state of emer­gency de­clared by the coun­try."

The Min­istry of Health re­mind­ed the pop­u­la­tion yes­ter­day that the In­fluen­za vac­cine is avail­able, free of charge, at all health cen­tres across the coun­try. With the im­pend­ing Car­ni­val sea­son, they are en­cour­ag­ing "vul­ner­a­ble per­sons in­clud­ing the el­der­ly, preg­nant women, im­muno­com­pro­mised per­sons and those with chron­ic Non-Com­mu­ni­ca­ble Dis­eases (NCDs)" to get the In­fluen­za vac­cine.

The min­istry said they will con­tin­ue to pro­vide up­dates to the pub­lic as nec­es­sary.