Five years ago, the world heard about a mysterious flu-like illness emerging from Wuhan, China,now known as Covid-19. What followed was an unprecedented pandemic that brought more than 14 million deaths worldwide and over 400 million people suffering with long Covid symptoms.
Fast forward five years later, and the uncertainty over whether or not the world faces another pandemic looms heavily in the air. This comes after a surge in cases of the flu-like human metapneumovirus ( HMPV) in China has raised fears of another Covid-style pandemic.
Images of hospitals overrun with masked patients have circulated widely on social media, but health experts say HMPV is not like Covid, and point out that it has been around for many years and say that China and other countries are simply experiencing the seasonal increase in HMPV typically seen in winter.
So what exactly is HMPV ?
First identified in the Netherlands in 2001,HMPV spreads through direct contact between people, or when someone touches a contaminated surface. The virus leads to mild upper respiratory tract infection for most people and is usually most indistinguishable from flu.
Symptoms for most people include a cough, a fever and a blocked nose. The very young, including children under the age of two, are most vulnerable to the virus. It also poses a greater risk to those with weakened immune systems, including the elderly and those with advanced cancer according to Hsu Li Yang, an infectious disease specialist based in Singapore.
Like many respiratory infections, HMPV is most active during later winter and early spring. This is beacuse viruses survive better in the cold and can pass more easily from one person to another as people spend more time indoors with closed windows. In northern China, the current HMPV spike coincides with low temperatures that are expected to last until March.
Many other countries in the northern hemisphere-including the United States-are also experiencing a growth in rates of HMPV, this according to the World Health Organization (WHO). The incidence of HMPV in the United Kingdom has also risen steadily since October.
Meanwhile back home here in South Africa, the National Institute For Communicable Diseases has called for calm. Minister of Health Aaron Motsoaledi said that the country is monitoring the HMPV outbreak in China to help mitigate against any spread in South Africa.
“There is a team that has been working for the whole year in Geneva, Switzerland . That team is called an inter-governmental negotiating body. It is chaired by somebody who was our Director-General of Health in the country and they are negotiating what must happen if a new pandemic arises,” said Motsoaledi.
He further stated that in case of an outbreak, the NICD has robust surveillance systems across South Africa, which will be able to detect an increase in respiratory pathogen circulation.
HPMV is detected all year round in South Africa as one of the regular seasonal respiratory viruses.
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