11 HMPV positive cases were reported in Hyderabad in December 2024

Contrary to the claims of the Telangana Public Health department that no cases of Human Metapneumovirus (HMPV) have been reported in the State, a private laboratory in the city on Tuesday disclosed they had in fact detected 11 HMPV positive infections last month.

The private laboratory Mani Microbiological Laboratory, Hyderabad, conducted tests on 258 respiratory samples of patients with various viral infections. Of these samples, 205 samples tested positive for a variety of upper respiratory tract infections.

Eleven of the samples tested positive for HMPV, the respiratory viral pneumonia panel data of Mani Microbiology Laboratory, taken up in December, 2024, said. All the cases that tested



positive for HMPV had also recovered.

“People should not panic thinking that HMPV is something new or novel. Even Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) has made it clear that HMPV is there in India since a long time. About 5 percent of the samples that were tested by this particular laboratory tested positive for HMPV,” says senior paediatric specialist from Hyderabad, Dr Sivaranjini Santosh.

Apart from HMPV, the testing data from the microbiology lab indicated that 94 samples tested positive for bacterial pneumonia, 62 tested positive for rhinovirus and 33 adenovirus, both cause flu or common cold. Samples of nine individuals tested positive for influenza while one person tested positive for H1N1.