The Min­istry of Health is main­tain­ing that the Hu­man Metap­neu­movirus (hM­PV) is not a new dis­ease and has been de­tect­ed world­wide since 2001. Fur­ther­more, it says sev­en cas­es were de­tect­ed last year and not one.

The St Au­gus­tine Med­ical Lab­o­ra­to­ry Lim­it­ed re­cent­ly con­firmed that it had de­tect­ed a case of hM­PV in No­vem­ber 2024 through mol­e­c­u­lar PCR test­ing, draw­ing at­ten­tion to the virus’ pres­ence in the coun­try.

How­ev­er, in a state­ment yes­ter­day, the cor­rect­ing what it de­scribed as er­ro­neous me­dia re­ports about that case be­ing the “first case” of hM­PV last year.

“The Min­is­ter of Health and the Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer have pub­licly stat­ed that hM­PV is not new to the world, in­clud­ing the re­gion of the Amer­i­c­as and Trinidad and To­ba­go,” the min­istry said in a state­ment.

The min­istry al­so re­vealed da­ta from the Trinidad Pub­lic Health Lab­o­ra­to­ry (TPHL) show­ing that con­firmed cas­es of hM­PV were record­ed lo­cal­ly over the past sev­er­al years. In 2019, there were 12 con­firmed cas­es, fol­lowed by five cas­es in 2020. There were no cas­es re­port­ed in 2021, but one was con­firmed in 2022. The num­ber in­creased to nine in 2023, and sev­en cas­es were con­firmed in 2024.

The min­istry em­pha­sised that hM­PV was not a no­ti­fi­able dis­ease and did not re­quire statu­to­ry re­port­ing. It urged the me­dia to main­tain high jour­nal­is­tic stan­dards to pre­vent mis­in­for­ma­tion and un­nec­es­sary pan­ic.

How­ev­er, Op­po­si­tion MPs Dr Rai Rag­bir and Dr Rishad Seecher­an called on the min­istry to in­crease test­ing and sur­veil­lance, em­pha­sis­ing the need for proac­tive mea­sures, par­tic­u­lar­ly with Car­ni­val sea­son ap­proach­ing.

Rag­bir said, “hM­PV pos­es se­ri­ous risks to vul­ner­a­ble groups, in­clud­ing chil­dren, the el­der­ly, and peo­ple with weak­ened im­mune sys­tems. The min­istry must act now to avoid pre­ventable health out­comes.”

Seecher­an added, “Car­ni­val in­volves large crowds and trav­el. The min­istry must ad­dress po­ten­tial risks and en­sure the pub­lic knows how to pro­tect them­selves.”

Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh re­it­er­at­ed on Jan­u­ary 12 that hM­PV is not a pub­lic health emer­gency.

“There are no out­breaks or con­firmed clus­ters in Trinidad and To­ba­go,” he said.

The World Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion and the US Cen­ters for Dis­ease Con­trol and Pre­ven­tion clas­si­fy hM­PV as a res­pi­ra­to­ry virus that spreads through close con­tact.

The Min­istry of Health as­sured the pub­lic that it would con­tin­ue to pro­vide up­dates as nec­es­sary.