Originally Published by Yahoo!News
Cases of another type of respiratory virus spiked this spring, just as COVID-19 and RSV rates were finally falling in the US.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 19.6% of antigen tests and nearly 11% of PCR tests for human metapneumovirus, or HMPV, were positive in the US in early March.
The nearly 11% of positive PCR cases is up 36% since before the COVID-19 pandemic when PCR tests for HMPV were coming back with a rate of 7% positivity, per CDC.
In contrast, COVID-19 cases were down nearly 30% at the beginning of March, according to the World Health Organization, and the number of people being hospitalized for RSV was down to 1.2 people per 100,000 in March from 4.5 people per 100,000 in January, according to CDC data.
Virus experts say this illness pattern looks a little more like the seasonality they typically saw in the US pre-pandemic, when RSV cases would spike first in the fall, then influenza would surge, and later in the season parainfluenzas and human metapneumovirus would circulate, into the spring.
“They would come in waves,” Dr. Pedro Piedra, a professor of molecular virology and respiratory virus expert at Baylor College of Medicine, previously told Insider. “These viruses, whether they be influenza, or RSV, or human metapneumovirus, can have a significant consequence on our health.”
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