What is HMPV virus currently affecting China?

New Delhi:  After five years of the Covid-19 pandemic, China is currently reeling under the new respiratory the Human Metapneumovirus (HMPV) virus.

Several media reports and social media posts suggest that the virus is spreading rapidly in the country. Some even claim that hospitals and crematories are being overwhelmed.

Videos shared online show crowded hospitals, with some users saying that multiple viruses, including influenza A, HMPV, Mycoplasma pneumoniae, and Covid, are circulating.

The reports claim that the spike in HMPV cases has led to an alarming increase in sudden deaths, with people aged 40 to 80 being particularly affected.

“China is facing a surge in multiple viruses, including Influenza A, HMPV, Mycoplasma pneumoniae, and Covid-19, overwhelming hospitals and crematoriums. Children’s hospitals are particularly strained by rising pneumonia and ‘white lung’ cases,” said a post by SARS-CoV-2 (Covid-19) handle on social media platform X.

Data from the Chinese CDC, in late December, showed that “the positive rate of HMPV in cases aged 14 and below has recently fluctuated and increased”, China’s state broadcaster CCTV reported.

What is HMPV?

HMPV, discovered in 2001, comes in the Pneumoviridae family along with the Respiratory syncytial virus (RSV). However, serological studies have shown that it has existed in humans for more than 60 years and is distributed all over the world.

The virus can lead to upper and lower respiratory disease in people of all ages. Young children, older adults, and people with weakened immune systems are majorly affected.

According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), symptoms commonly associated with HMPV include cough, fever, nasal congestion, and shortness of breath.

Li Tongzeng, a chief doctor from the Department of Respiratory and Infectious Diseases at Beijing You’an Hospital, Capital Medical University said that HMPV can be transmitted from person to person through respiratory droplets, and people-to-people contact, such as handshakes, or touching an object contaminated with the virus, the CCTV reported.

It has an incubation period of between three to five days.

Wearing a mask, washing hands frequently, and increasing immunity can help prevent the disease.

Experts are also warning against using antivirals for HMPV.

In a recent interview with the state-backed National Business Daily, a respiratory expert at a Shanghai hospital warned the public against blindly using antiviral drugs to fight human metapneumovirus, for which there is no vaccine but whose symptoms resemble those of a cold.

HMPV had in 2023 been detected in the Netherlands, Britain, Finland, Australia, Canada, the US and China.

–IANS