HMPV outbreak: Amid global concern, Chinese official says cases in northern China declining

In the wake of the recent HMPV outbreak in China, a health official from the country on Sunday said that the rate of infections with the flu-like human metapneumovirus (HMPV) in northern China is declining. The rising HMPV cases in China have triggered international concern over a potential pandemic.

“The human metapneumovirus is not a new virus, and has been with humans for at least several decades,” said Wang Liping, a researcher at the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, during a press briefing by China's National Health Commission.

Wang added that the increase in recent years in the number of cases of the virus, first detected in the Netherlands in 2001, is due to better detection methods. “At



present, the rate of positive cases in human metapneumovirus detection is fluctuating, and the rate of positive cases in northern provinces is declining, and the rate of positive cases among patients aged 14 and below has started to decline,” she said.

Why did HMPV cases raise concern? 

Recently after images circulated online of hospitals overrun with masked patients amid a surge in HMPV infections in northern China, concerns of it turning into another deadly pandemic after the world suffered from COVID-19 started making rounds.

However, Experts say HMPV is unlike COVID-19 in that it has been around for decades and there is some built-in immunity to it. Most children are infected with the virus by the age of 5.