VIRGINIA, USA — The summer season is upon us, and people are wondering if warmer weather will eliminate or slow the transmission of COVID-19.
Researchers at Virginia Tech have found that temperatures don't affect the spread at all.
Charlotte Baker, an assistant professor of Epidemiology at Virginia Tech said health officials believed that to be the case early on, but their findings reveal otherwise.
“We’re not expecting that weather is going to be one of those things that’s going to be an impact. For example with Florida, if warmth was something that killed it, then they’d have fewer cases than other places,” said Baker. “This thing is here with us, it’s here to stay. It’s about how we manage it.”
Baker explained why the idea of warmer weather getting rid of COVID-19 was thought of as a likely scenario early on.
“We didn’t know how different it was than the other coronaviruses we’re so used to seeing. We didn’t know how different it was than the seasonal flu. We thought it was more like the seasonal flu than it has turned out. It’s not behaving the same way that we expected it to behave, this one is completely blowing expectations,” said Baker.
She and a team of researchers anticipate COVID-19 will return in the fall.
“It has the potential for bringing everything to a halt again, so we have to do a better job of working together and getting it under control,” said Baker. “Hopefully it won’t get back to pandemic stages the next time around."
Baker said in order to slow the virus’s transmission, more testing is needed and people will need to continue following the CDC’s social distancing guidelines.
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