BEIJING, Jan 9 — Doctors in China brushed off media reports from around the world on the severity of the human metapneumovirus (HMPV) claiming they were treating more cases of flu.
The denials of a surge of HMPV cases that have reportedly overwhelmed Chinese hospitals, appear to be echoed by recent figures from China’s Centres for Disease Control and Prevention which shows a small increase in cases with many more cases of influenza.
In one of most prominent public children’s hospitals — the Children’s Hospital affiliated to Capital Institute of Pediatrics in Beijing — a child, one of the many receiving infusion treatment in the emergency room on yesterday, a doctor said most were infected with the flu virus and he had not heard of any cases of HMPV.
A respiratory physician named Wang at another major Beijing hospital, the China-Japan Friendship Hospital — said that the vast majority of inpatients in his unit – perhaps more than 90 per cent – had influenza infections, reported South China Morning Post.
Wang said there were slightly more HMPV infections than last year, but nowhere near the prevalence of the influenza virus, and there was nothing to justify calling it an “outbreak”.
Among the more than 100 beds in his ward, there were a few HMPV patients two weeks ago, but no new cases have been detected recently, and now all the hospitalised patients are influenza cases.
He said it was only in recent years, with the wider use of molecular diagnostic tests.
At the Guangzhou Eighth People’s Hospital In the southern Chinese province of Guangdong, infectious diseases department director Cai Weipin said his department had not seen any increase in HMPV cases.
At the Nanfang Hospital of Southern Medical University, infectious disease doctor Peng Jie said the virus was relatively rare at his hospital and called on the media not to overemphasize the HMPV virus.
An official from China’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) , Kan Biao, had told a press conference on Dec 27 that cases of HMPV among those under the age of 14 were showing an upward trend, especially in northern provinces while a Chinese study found new evidence that the world could be on the brink of another pandemic.
According to the latest data released by the CDC, the HMPV positive rate ranked among the top three in both outpatient and inpatient cases of respiratory pathogens for Dec 23 to 29, although its prevalence was much lower than influenza.
Outpatient influenza infections however had increased by 6.2 per cent from the previous week, while HMPV increased by 0.1 per cent.
Among inpatients, influenza cases rose by 5.4 per cent, while HMPV increased by 1 per cent.
On Tuesday, the World Health Organisation also brushed aside reports saying China’s reported levels of acute respiratory infections, including HMPV, “are within the expected range for the winter season, with no unusual outbreak patterns reported.
“Chinese authorities report that the health care system is not overwhelmed and there have been no emergency declarations or responses triggered.
“The virus is always present in the environment, and in winter, when human immunity is weaker, it is easy for the elderly and children to catch it. But unlike other respiratory viruses such as Covid, HMPV does not spread easily in the population,” he said.
Cases of HMPV have been on the rise in other countries, including the US which has seen a low-level increase.
The US CDC said that of the estimated 13,800 people tested for respiratory illness during the week of 28 December, only 1.94 per cent tested positive for HMPV. By comparison, 18.71 per cent of weekly tests were positive for influenza and 7.10 per cent were positive for Covid.
