05/20/2021

How the Changes of Seasons Might Affect COVID-19

Researchers want to know if the disease is seasonal

The maps that the National Weather Service (NWS) publishes every month, forecasting what may happen in the months to come, predict above-average temperatures and rainfall for much of the United States in May, June and July. In normal times, that would be unnerving news, a sign of storms coming and a climate wrenched awry. Right now, though, the predictions are fueling a weird hope: that a hotter, wetter summer might put the brakes on COVID-19.

In the temperate zones of the world, other respiratory pathogens, and even other coronaviruses, lose their power as temperatures and humidity rise. But for the coronavirus fueling this pandemic, that remains only a hope. The research showing whether it possesses what virologists call “seasonality” is early, and much of it is contradictory. There is no clear proof yet that summer might save us.

The notion that the virus might be seasonal got big air time on April 23 during a White House briefing, when William Bryan, an acting undersecretary in the Department of Homeland Security, previewed unpublished research done at the National Biodefense Analysis and Countermeasures Center, within the army’s biosecurity laboratory. Bryan said that increases in ambient temperature and humidity, and exposure to sunlight, all cut into the virus’s ability to survive in the droplets that people exhale when they cough and speak, as well as on the surfaces onto which those droplets fall.

Please select this link to read the complete article from WIRED.