DC Edit | HMPV: No need to panic

The news that was dreaded about the incidence of the Human Metapneumovirus in India has come. It was bound to, considering the virus may already have been existing without the medical fraternity and the people being unduly worried about it as the virus has been known to be most prevalent during the winter and early spring months and that it causes flu-like symptoms. It is the background of the global pandemic of 2020 caused by the Covid-19 virus, which may have come out of an animal market in Wuhan in China or a laboratory in the same city, that the news is being received with various levels of shock. So little was known of the Covid-19 virus that the world was in the grip of absolute panic when it first began spreading in India. While high risk groups might be advised caution about touching surfaces or going near infected people, the time is not such that society must have to shut down as it did in the face of the Covid-19 pandemic.