Study suggests warm weather could potentially impact COVID-19
With USC Aiken’s spring semester nearing the end, but the COVID-19 disease pandemic seemingly having no end in sight, students may find consolation in research suggesting heat may slow down the virus.
Preliminary studies have found that “higher temperatures are associated with lower incidence of COVID-19.”
This means that with seasonal variation and temperature disparities, numbers of COVID-19 cases may decline in the Northern Hemisphere as warmer seasons approach.
In an article by Andrew Freedman and Simon Denyer of the Washington Post, “Multiple early studies provide evidence of statistical ties between temperature and humidity ranges and the geographic regions where this virus has thrived.”
This also suggests that with a decline in temperature, a second wave of the pandemic may come roaring back during the cooler seasons.
Anthony S. Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), commented on this possibility at a press briefing.
“... we’re starting to see now in the Southern Hemisphere, in southern Africa and in the southern hemisphere countries, is that we’re having cases that are appearing as they go into their winter season. And if, in fact, they have a substantial outbreak, it will be inevitable that we need to be prepared, that we’ll get a cycle around the second time.”
Studies relating to SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) have found that “... higher temperatures were shown to have a protective effect against transmission of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) in 2002–2003 [5], possibly due to the decreased survival of the SARS-CoV on surfaces at higher temperatures [6].”
The same was observed for the human influenza virus, commonly known as the flu.
While COVID-19 is still undergoing research and testing this theory, preliminary evidence shows that with a rise in temperature between 10 to 19 degrees C (50 to 66.9 degrees F, respectively) there was a decline at a rate of 61.1%.
However, A report by the Center for Communicable Disease Dynamics (CCDD) suggests that while a decline in temperatures may decrease the number of cases, “it is not reasonable to expect these declines alone to slow transmission enough to make a big dent.”
While SARS did decrease with warmer weather, CCDD states that appropriate public measures and social distancing impacted the decrease rate.
Drier air and less host transmission through effective policy-making combined may have a greater dent than lower temperatures alone.
Richard Gray highlights these conflicting discrepancies in studies in this article.
“The virus that causes Covid-19 – which has been officially named SARS-CoV-2 – is too new to have any firm data on how cases will change with the seasons. The closely related Sars virus that spread in 2003 was contained quickly, meaning there is little information about how it was affected by the seasons,” he wrote.
Gray continued, “But there are some clues from other coronaviruses that infect humans as to whether Covid-19 might eventually become seasonal.”
“There are some early hints that Covid-19 may also vary with the seasons,” he wrote. He also noted that the virus tends to have a preference for cool, dry conditions. There have been cases, however, present in hot and humid climates.
The coronavirus belongs to a family of “enveloped viruses,” meaning it has an oily layer that surrounds it. Research commonly suggests that this layer is more susceptible to heat than viruses without the layer. Viruses with this layer also tend to show “seasonality” because of it.
Gray writes “the spread of a virus depends on far more than simply its ability to survive in the environment.”
This coincides with previous studies implying social distancing and more protective public policies will have a greater impact on decreased cases combined with the potential seasonality of the virus.
