Severe pneumonia in children is on the rise, and the capital's hospital is sending infected children to Odense.

Copenhagen's main hospital, Rigshospitalet, and other hospitals across the country are seeing a surge in cases of children with severe pneumonia. An exceptionally large number of children have contracted serious pneumonia this year, and many have required drainage tubes, doctors at Rigshospitalet, Aarhus University Hospital, and Odense University Hospital confirmed to a television station, according to the newspaper BT.

Odense University Hospital chief physician Niels Fisker said that pneumonia in children “has been markedly more prevalent this year,” adding that there have been few deaths among children due to the disease. He said the reason for the sharp increase was “an exceptionally large number of group A streptococcal infections.”.

Streptococcus is usually a harmless bacterium, but since December there has been a sharp increase in the incidence of dangerous invasive group A streptococcus, also known as invasive strep-A.

At Rigshospitalet, chief physician in the pediatrics and adolescents department, Eva Musfeldt-Jepsen, said that there has been an increase in the number of cases that required hospitalization, and in the first three months of this year alone, drainage tubes have been placed in the lungs of 20 children so far, and this number is equivalent to what was used during the previous four years combined.

For this reason, Rigshospitalet had to send children from Shelland to Odense. Ypesen reported that the number of cases was actually very large, but hospitals only admit advanced cases for treatment, which are cases that require the insertion of drainage tubes from the child's lung.