Harvard Professor: "COVID-19 May Not Disappear Even with Rising Temperatures"

Electron microscope image of the COVID-19 virus

[Asia Economy Reporter Donghoon Jeong] Experts have expressed the view that the expectation that the spread of the novel coronavirus infection (COVID-19) will subside as temperatures rise may be a misjudgment.

According to the South China Morning Post (SCMP) in Hong Kong on the 1st, Mark Lipsitch, a professor of epidemiology at Harvard University, stated, "The idea that SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) disappeared in the summer of 2003 is a widely spread misconception," adding, "SARS was controlled through unprecedented and very strong public health efforts, not because it disappeared."

He continued, "New viruses tend to spread easily among people regardless of the weather," and said, "While coronaviruses do have seasonality, it is a mistake to expect COVID-19 to have the same characteristics."

Earlier, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) had predicted that the spread of COVID-19 would slow down as the weather warms. CDC experts expected that, like influenza and other viral respiratory diseases, COVID-19 would exhibit seasonality and that transmission would decrease as spring and summer approach.

Dr. Amesh Adalja of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security also forecasted that COVID-19 might follow a different path from SARS. He said, "COVID-19, which has spread to dozens of countries, appears to be in the early stages of a global pandemic," and predicted, "Until a vaccine is developed, COVID-19 could become the fifth seasonal coronavirus."

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