Prepare for a summer of coronavirus, researchers warn
- Effects of temperature may help map future outbreaks but without immunity Covid-19 will continue its deadly spread, study finds
- Tropical and temperate locations should ‘prepare for severe outbreaks’
The research, published online by the journal Science on Monday, showed the impact of weather was not as significant during a pandemic as the susceptibility of the general population, contradicting early hopes that the spread of the disease would be slowed with the changing seasons.
Scientists from Princeton University and the US National Institutes of Health built a transmission model with parameters which included the climate dependence of transmission and the length of immunity following infection, adjusted with the known climate sensitivity of two other coronaviruses.
They then simulated different scenarios based on what is known about Sars-CoV-2 – the new coronavirus which causes Covid-19 – and found that weather conditions, like humidity, temperature and latitude, made only modest changes to the size of the pandemic.
In the longer term, these changes could be helpful in predicting future outbreaks, but the results suggested the percentage of a population with immunity was a “much more fundamental driver” of pandemic invasion dynamics and, in the case of the new coronavirus, nearly everyone was susceptible to infection.
