HMPV Virus: Another Lockdown

Another virus which has no treatment is rising, people are worried that will it be the second Covid, is another pandemic going to take place? Will there be another lockdown? Let’s know in this Article!

5 years back, Corona Virus which changed everything, began in a market of Wuhan, China. China’s official government news site Global Times has said that in some northern areas of China like Beijing, Chongqing, Guangdong have the most number of cases of this virus. This virus is HMPV (Human Metapneumovirus). Now people will think that what new virus has now come? But the thing is that it isn’t a new virus!

It was first discovered in 2001, 24 years ago, in Netherlands. Where Covid 19 is believed to start from bats and then come into humans but HMPV virus originated 200-400 ago in birds. Since then this virus kept mutating itself and now birds can’t be infected by this virus.

Now you might think that this virus was hidden somewhere and now it has spread in 2025, but no, HMPV virus has been active in every season. People are infected by this virus but they assume that they have common cold and after some days that goes away on its own and people don’t even know that they were just affected by HMPV.

This virus is a respiratory virus that is why its symptoms are similar to flu or influenza. Those who are affected by it can have fever, coughing, blocked nose and difficulty is breathing or shortness of breath.

The incubation of this virus is around 3-6 days. Once you’re infected, the intensity or duration of the sickness depends on your overall health and how serious the infection is. Children and elders face more serious complications like they often get infected by pneumonia as well. According to a professor of Paul Hunter University of Anglia, almost every child less than 5 years of age has been infected by this virus once and throughout life they get reinfections as well. Being a respiratory disease, it spreads very commonly, the way of spreading of HMPV is like flu etc., which is through droplets of someone’s cough or sneeze or if some infected person has touched a surface and then you touch that contaminated surface and touch your mouth etc. like this it can spread.

Till now you might have understood that what precautions could be taken by you. If someone is infected, a proper distance should be maintained by them, then while sneezing it will be best to use a cloth or handkerchief or if a handkerchief isn’t available, you can use your arm, some people use their hands which is wrong, because the droplets would get onto your hand and you’ll use the hand to grab or touch things in public places.

This is also a good advice for normal cold etc. you can use mask in public places and use your arm to cough or sneeze. Aside from this, your hands should be kept regularly washed whether you’re infected or not. Because you touch your mouth, nose or eyes often, so when you go in public places and touch various things; washing hands will keep your hands clean which reduces the risk of you being infected.

Mostly healthy people who are infected by HMPV can take rest, stay at home, and stay hydrated and normally they will get fine in 7-10 days. The problem is for those who are already infected by another disease or their immune system isn’t good, so they might have to be admitted in the hospital.

As told in the beginning of the article, this virus has no vaccine. It isn’t like that scientists haven’t tried, but there were problems related to the safety and efficacy of the vaccines.

There are two reasons that this vaccine was first tested on animals but in many cases the lung inflammation of those animals just worsened. The second reason is that it could hardly ensure long-term immunity. Because common cold is a thing that mostly happens to a person 1-3 times to a person over the year and there’s not merely one virus from which you can have cold but there are 200 different viruses which keep mutating which can cause cold, that’s why there’s no vaccine for common cold as well.

Well, WHO (World Health Organization) says that it is unlikely for a major outbreak because of this virus. So this isn’t like Covid 19, this virus has been there for decades so people have a certain level of immunity against it. It is possible that you who might be reading this article have an immunity against HMPV.

The chances of it happening seriously is in children of infant, those whose’ lungs are damaged or have COPD or those whose immunity is weak. Other people might just face cough for a long time and nothing else to be worried.

In 2018, around 65% of the total number of deaths was of children under 6 months. So danger for children under 1 year is more.

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The Spokesperson of World Health Organization Margaret Harris says that “The risk of death from HMPV cases is very, very low.”

But the children under 1 year have delicate airways and their immunity is weak as well so they have a higher chance of being blocked by the disease, so difficulty for children to fight against these is higher.

So don’t worry a lot at all, just follow the precautions and try to stay safe as much as you can.