Will Warmer Temps Help Contain Coronavirus

Will Warmer Temps Help Contain Coronavirus

Despite rumors (fake news?) to the contrary, a new study suggests that hot summer days will not chill out the coronavirus. We curated this story from WebMd.

Two new reports suggest that the warm summer months will not significantly slow the novel coronavirus as it spreads around the globe.

“Summer is not going to make this go away,” said Dionne Gesink, an epidemiologist at the University of Toronto’s Dalla Lana School of Public Health who co-authored a May 8 report in the Canadian Medical Association Journal that found neither temperature nor latitude altered COVID-19 infection rates. However, school closures and other public health measures did.

“It’s important people know that,” Gesink said in a journal news release. “On the other hand, the more public health interventions an area had in place, the bigger the impact on slowing the epidemic growth. These public health interventions are really important because they’re the only thing working right now to slow the epidemic.”

American researchers came to a similar conclusion in a paper that has not yet been peer-reviewed.

In that report, researchers led by Hazhir Rahmandad, an associate professor of system dynamics at MIT Sloan School of Management, found that summer weather is not likely to halt the transmission of the COVID-19 coronavirus…

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1 Comment
  • Douglas Tooley
    Posted at 03:27h, 24 May

    As reported on the BBC for some time this is very likely the case. I believe Singapore was the earliest case.

    I do suspect that summer will have higher survival rates and quicker recovery. IRRC there has been a study linking vitamin d to better outcomes, for one thing.