A virologist has reassured the public that China's current outbreak of HMPV, a virus causing cold-like symptoms, is unlikely to cause a global crisis.
China 's HMPV virus outbreak is not as severe as the Covid pandemic, an expert has claimed. Virologist Professor Jill Carr has reassured people that the country's current outbreak of HMPV - known as human metapneumovirus - is not likely to cause a global crisis. The virus causes cold-like symptoms including a cough, fever and a runny or blocked nose. Like Covid , it's spread through droplet particles in the air, either from coughing or sneezing, or left on surfaces.
Concerns have been raised after photos appeared to show overcrowded waiting rooms and wards in hospitals across China in recent weeks. However, Beijing has downplayed these images, saying that respiratory infections are 'less severe' and 'smaller in scale' compared to last year, Mirror UK reports. Prof Carr, from the College of Medicine and Public Health at Flinders University in Adelaide, Australia, said: 'This is very different to the Covid-19 pandemic, where the virus was completely new in humans and arose from a spill-over from animals and spread to pandemic levels because there was no prior exposures or protective immunity in the community. READ MORE: Rare weather alert as Met Eireann warns of unusual 48-hour development READ MORE: Rock star rages over 'mental' Dublin Airport taxi fare that 'cost more than flight' 'The scientific community also has some understanding of the genetic diversity and epidemiology of HMPV, the kind of impact the virus has on the lungs and established laboratory testing methods - again, very different to the Covid-19 pandemic, where a new lung disease was seen, there was little information on how the virus may vary and spread and we had no initial diagnostic tests.' Unlike Covid, HMPV is not a new virus to humans, with the first case of a human infection reported in 2001 in the Netherlands. It tends to circulate during the winter in many countries, including Ireland. HMPV is in the same family of viruses as another common illness RSV (respiratory syncytial virus)
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