Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many cases of human metapneumovirus have been identified in the UK.

The UK Health Security Agency’s long-term surveillance of human metapneumovirus (hMPV) in England, through systems covering general practice surgeries and hospital laboratories, indicates that hMPV levels in winter 2024-25 are in line with what we would expect to see at this time of year.

Healthcare data for hMPV and other respiratory viruses comes from the sentinel surveillance system, a data collection method used to monitor trends. This means it is not a count of every person being treated for the respiratory virus in hospital. Total case numbers are therefore not held centrally.

Further information on data collection is available at the following link:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/sources-of-surveillance-data-for-influenza-covid-19-and-other-respiratory-viruses