About the Author: Ari Allyn-Feuer holds a PhD in bioinformatics and serves as a senior data scientist at a leading pharmaceutical company. His work involves developing life-saving medications.
There's been quite a bit of speculation among scientists, along with hopeful predictions from a particular U.S. president, regarding how warmer temperatures might impact the coronavirus.
The takeaway? While the heat could grant us valuable time to enhance our efforts against the virus, the notion that "summer will put an end to it" is highly improbable.
Typically, common cold coronaviruses and seasonal or pandemic flu viruses exhibit a seasonal trend, peaking during the winter months and often subsiding somewhat in the summer.
Sometimes, a newly emerging disease follows this same pattern, where an epidemic that diminishes in the spring may be nearly wiped out over the summer. In some instances, the illness reappears in the winter, either in a milder or more severe form. This was seen with SARS, which weakened in the summer of 2003, returned with fewer cases the following winter, and eventually disappeared. A similar scenario occurred with the 1918 flu pandemic, which saw a decline in the summer of 1918 but surged back even harder in the winter.
It remains uncertain just how much SARS-CoV-2 is influenced by this pattern. Although there's been some research on the topic, since no clear seasonal cycle has yet been identified, it's challenging to draw definitive conclusions.
Certain warmer regions have reported slower rates of COVID-19 transmission compared to colder areas, though the virus is still spreading. Generally, we've witnessed substantial transmission of COVID-19 in numerous tropical nations, including Brazil, Panama, Algeria, India, Bahrain, Qatar, and Singapore and Malaysia, all of which have recorded hundreds of cases.
Take Rio de Janeiro, for instance, where temperatures often reach 90 degrees Fahrenheit, yet the virus continues to spread.
This current map of COVID-19 cases reveals visible transmission in warmer climates as well.
A complicating factor is that the northern hemisphere’s summer coincides with the southern hemisphere’s winter. SARS primarily affected northern hemisphere countries, whereas COVID-19 has already reached Level 2 in places like Chile, Argentina, South Africa, and New Zealand, and may be at Level 3 in Australia. Even if there is a significant temperature effect, the southern hemisphere could act as a disease reservoir during the northern hemisphere’s winter, alongside ongoing low-level transmission within the tropics and the north itself.
While seasonality may play a role in determining where and when the pandemic peaks, and it might offer the northern hemisphere a reprieve in the upcoming months, it won't likely be a decisive solution to ending the pandemic entirely.
That said, if the temperature effect proves to be genuinely impactful, it could provide crucial months of relief that the northern hemisphere can utilize to ready itself. Provided these opportunities aren’t squandered, as February was in the U.S., this time could prove invaluable.
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