New Delhi: The conduct of a large section of mainstream Indian media in the first week of 2025 was an unpleasant reminder of over a year ago. On both occasions, the media contributed to panic over a “new” virus outbreak in India, which it said was followed by a “new” virus scare in China.

Throughout January 6, breaking news flashed on Indian TV channels on the detection of Human Metapneumovirus (HMPV) cases. As many as five cases of HMPV, mostly among children, have been reported in the country till January 6 evening. Patients tested positive in Karnataka, Gujarat and Tamil Nadu.

In November 2023, various news channels had reported that China was facing an outbreak of a “mysterious” virus. The resultant panic was clearly visible on social media.

However, neither in November 2023 nor in January 2025 was there a “new” virus outbreak in China. Both the times, what has happened is an outbreak involving a combination of respiratory viruses – something that does happen in winter.

The build-up to the hysteria this year started about a week ago when a couple of Indian media outlets (here and here) ran reports and others screamed headlines about a “new fear” while trying to draw similarities between the COVID-19 outbreak and what is happening this year.

Some have, incredibly, even gone on to predict a possible pandemic.

A simple scientific explanation is enough to gauge the fundamental differences between the Sars-Cov-2 – the virus causing COVID-19 – and the HMPV.

Sars-CoV-2 was a virus of unknown origin. No scientist had known about it before it appeared and therefore, it was termed a novel (or new) coronavirus. Also, 2020 saw the first ever outbreak of Sars-Cov-2. On other hand, a Google search reveals within seconds that HMPV was first found in 2001.

Further, Sars-Cov-2 is an RNA virus while HMPV is a DNA virus. This would mean that the former has the capacity to mutate and change its variants faster while the same probability with the latter remains quite low because of this one difference in property.

So far, there is no scientific evidence to claim that the HMPV has mutated to........

© The Wire