Cases of human metapneumovirus, or HMPV, spiked this spring, according to the CDC's respiratory virus surveillance systems. It filled hospital intensive care units with young children and seniors who are the most vulnerable to these infections.
Most people who caught it probably didn't even know they had it, however. Sick people aren't usually tested for it outside of a hospital or ER. Unlike COVID-19 and the flu, there's no vaccine for HMPV or antiviral drugs to treat it. Instead, doctors care for seriously ill people by tending to their symptoms.that HMPV causes as much misery in the U.S. each year as the flu and a closely related virus, RSV.
Her cough was so constant and deep, she was convinced she had finally caught the coronavirus after managing to avoid it throughout the pandemic. But she took six rapid tests for COVID-19, and all came back negative. The researchers cultured the samples in various types of cells from monkeys, chickens and dogs, and then they looked at the cultures under an electron microscope. They saw something that seemed structurally related to the paramyxoviridae family, a group of viruses known to give people respiratory disease like measles, mumps and respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV.
Williams says there were sweeping epidemiological studies conducted in the 1950s and '60s, looking into the causes of respiratory infections. The infection generates weak or incomplete immune protection, however, and humans get reinfected throughout their lives.
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