A mother from Ohio, US, has revealed her healthy teenage son was hours away from suffering brain damage after being struck down by the same pneumonia plaguing China and Europe.
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William McCarren, 14, was rushed to hospital Wednesday after coming home from school “crying and holding his chest,” saying he could “barely breathe,” his mother said , Mollee Campbell, at the DailyMail.
He was very pale and had difficulty staying awake, he was acting like he was going to pass out,” she added.
When he arrived at the emergency room, doctors told him that William’s lungs were so full of fluid that they were depriving his body and organs of oxygen. If his oxygen level had dropped lower, he could have suffered brain damage, his mother detailed, holding back tears.
William was diagnosed with mycoplasma, the bacterial infection at the center of pneumonia outbreaks in China and several European countries. He is one of about 140 children in the Warren County, Ohio, area who have fallen ill with the lung condition.
The cases are so numerous that they “meet the definition of an epidemic,” doctors say. Warren County health officials said Thursday they have treated an “extremely high” number of children with pneumonia, 145 cases since August.
The average patient is about 8 years old and no deaths have been reported, but the number of patients is unusual.
Mycoplasma is a bacterial infection that causes outbreaks about every five years, but rarely makes headlines because cases are mild and deaths extremely rare.
The difference this time, experts told the DailyMail, is that children’s immunity is low following lockdowns, school closures and mask mandates.
The bacterial infection is also believed to be behind the outbreak in China which has overwhelmed pediatric hospitals in the North.
It is also the cause of cases and deaths in certain regions of Europe, notably in the Netherlands and Denmark.
Doctors stressed, however, that the outbreaks were not the result of infections being transferred from one country to another.
