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Dr Michael Head said HMPV is ‘already present’ in the UK but pinpointed a crucial difference between the recent outbreak in northern China and the Covid-19 pandemic
A doctor has pinpointed a key difference between Covid-19 and the current HMPV outbreak in northern China.
HMPV is a flu-like virus that leads to a mild infection of the upper respiratory tract. It was first identified in the Netherlands in 2001 and is spread through contact with an infected person or contaminated surface. It is relatively harmless for most people but can be deadly in some instances, particularly in very young children or people with compromised immune systems.
In recent weeks, images of overcrowded hospitals in China prompted fears of another pandemic similar to Covid-19. Officials in China noted there had been a spike in HMPV cases in late December, particularly in children aged under 14 in the country’s northern provinces.
Dr Michael Head, Senior Research Fellow in Global Health at the University of Southampton, told the Mirror that a pandemic similar to Covid-19 is “unlikely”. Whereas Covid-19 was an “entirely new” form of coronavirus, HMPV has been around for years
Dr Head said: “HMPV is a common enough respiratory infection, that is already present here in the UK. There will be fairly widespread levels of immunity in the UK and globally. Therefore, whilst large outbreaks will be of local public health concern, it’s unlikely to result in a pandemic scenario as per COVID-19 which was an entirely new type of coronavirus with minimal population immunity.”
Dr Head added that spikes in respiratory infections such as HMPV, flu and Covid-19 are to be expected around this time of year. “We can expect to see an increase in respiratory infections generally, as we saw with COVID, after Christmas periods where there was significant travel and people clustering indoors. This will include flu, coronaviruses and likely HMPV too,” he explained.
This week the UK Health Security Agency took to X to quell fears around HMPV. It said: “You may have seen news stories about human metapneumovirus virus (HMPV) cases in China. We routinely monitor this virus and our data shows that it is currently following its usual seasonal pattern in the UK.”
The latest data from the UKHSA shows there has been a slight uptick in cases of HMPV, rising by 4.15 percentage points between October and December last year.