Warmer weather is unlikely to stop the spread of COVID-19 coronavirus, said Francis Collins, director of the U.S. National Institute of Health.
“At the moment, many researchers doubt that the COVID-19 pandemic will go over in the summer to the necessary lull,” he wrote on his blog, emphasizing that in some laboratory experiments it was hypothesized that high temperature and humidity could reduce the viability of SARS-CoV coronavirus -2, like other well-known coronaviruses, the spread of which slows with the advent of summer.
But COVID-19, as a completely new infection, is different from seasonal respiratory infections.
According to Collins, the climate will become an important seasonal factor in controlling the spread of COVID-19 only after the emergence of collective immunity.
He pointed to “sobering predictions” published in the journal Science, according to which the coronavirus is likely to spread throughout the summer.
“The research team found that a person’s lack of immunity to SARS-CoV-2, and not the weather, is likely to be the main factor contributing to the constant and rapid spread of the new coronavirus this summer and fall,” Collins said.
According to him, this also explains the rapid spread of COVID-19 in Brazil, Ecuador, and some other tropical countries.
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Recall that according to data on June 2, the largest epicenters of the spread of coronavirus infection are:
- United States of America – 1 811 357 cases (21 166 per day);
- Brazil – 526,447 cases (11,598 per day);
- Russia – 414 328 cases (8 485 per day);
- Great Britain – 277 736 cases (1,580 per day);
- Spain – 239 638 cases (158 per day);
- Italy – 233 197 cases (200 per day);
- India – 198,370 cases (7,748 per day);
- France – 189 348 cases (339 per day);
- Germany – 183 594 cases (184 in essence);
- Peru – 170,039 cases (5,563 per day);
- Turkey – 164,769 cases (827 per day).
