False posts about HMPV cases leading to school closures in China circulate online

Published on January 23, 2025 at 13:11
4 min read
By Tendai DUBE, Tommy WANG, AFP South Africa, AFP Hong Kong

Amid fears of another global pandemic, social media users are circulating claims that all schools in China have been closed due to a rise in “new” human metapneumovirus (HMPV) cases. However, this is false; while there was an increase in cases at the end of 2024, the country did not respond by closing schools. China said infections are seasonal at this time of the year, as in other parts of the world.

“BREAKING NEWS: ALL SCHOOLS CLOSED DOWN IN CHINA DUE TO VIRUS,” wrote a South African Facebook user on January 8, 2025.

The post, shared more than 7,000 times, adds that schools were closed “due to the uncontrollable rise of new Metapneumovirus infections. Confirmed. India also confirmed 7 new cases of the virus in their country.”

HMPV is one of the acute respiratory infectious viruses currently prevalent in China and has circulated worldwide for decades (archived here).

Screenshot of the false Facebook post, taken on January 23, 2025

Similar posts circulated thousands of times on Facebook and X here and here.

Many of the replies to the Facebook post were discriminatory toward the Chinese, reminiscent of the hostility seen during the Covid-19 pandemic (archived here).

“Close airport people before you kill us,” reads one of the comments.

On January 17, 2025, the World Health Organization’s (WHO) social listening analyst, Elsa-Maria Karam, said that the conversation about “HMPV has been gaining some traction among online users in South Africa and Kenya for the past seven days”.

However, the claims about schools closing in China because of HMPV are false.

China cases

Reports of a spike in HMPV cases in China have sparked concern since late last year, but experts dismissed fears that the situation was comparable to the start of Covid-19 five years ago (archived here).

Common symptoms of HMPV include coughing, fever, and a blocked nose — similar to the flu or a cold. These symptoms can lead to more serious complications, especially in the elderly, infants, and immunocompromised people.

However, China's National Health Commission spokesperson, Mi Feng, told the media at a press conference on January 17, 2025, that “influenza and other respiratory infectious diseases are in a seasonal epidemic period” (archived here).

India and the United Kingdom have also reported seasonal increases in HMPV since late 2024 (archived here).

Seasonal increases in HMPV cases were also recorded in the UK and India (AFP / Idrees MOHAMMED)

Feng added: “Surveillance results show that all of the respiratory infectious diseases in the winter and spring are caused by known pathogens, and no new infectious diseases have emerged.”

At the same conference, Li Dongzeng, chief physician of Beijing You'an Hospital, said the development and progress of detection methods in recent years meant there has been an increase in reports of HMPV.

Dongzeng added that there was no crisis to speak of. “Monitoring shows that the proportion of human metapneumovirus in the current positive rate of nucleic acid in respiratory samples is not high.”

AFP Fact Check found reports indicating that some elementary schools in China were closed due to the high number of norovirus (stomach flu) infections (archived here).

Reports also claimed that elementary schools in some areas were preemptively closed due to the high number of influenza cases.

However, none of these reports specifically mentioned HMPV.

People wearing masks wait at an outpatient area of the respiratory department of a hospital in Beijing on January 8, 2025 (AFP / JADE GAO)

According to Chinese public health officials, class suspensions are required when a classroom has five cases of influenza in a single day (archived here).

A keyword search using simplified Chinese text on the official website of China’s Ministry of Education found no results of school closures linked to HMPV infections (archived here).

Meanwhile, the Chinese Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s latest surveillance report for acute respiratory infections, issued on January 16, 2025, said that current prevalent viruses in China still include influenza, HMPV, mycoplasma pneumonia, and adenoviruses (archived here).

The centre reported that the acute respiratory infectious disease epidemic remains high, with the influenza virus being the main pathogen causing recent diseases in the “seasonal epidemic stage”.

Other respiratory pathogens, including Covid-19, are at lower epidemic levels.

According to the WHO, no vaccine is licensed for use against HMPV, but research is ongoing.