Will COVID-19 become active or slow down in different weather?

Document Type : Letter to the Editor

Authors

1 Faculty of Science and Technology, The Technological and Higher Education Institute of Hong Kong, Tsing Yi, New Territories, Hong Kong

2 Department of Laboratory, Dhahran Eye Specialist Hospital, Ministry of Health, Dhahran, Saudi Arabia

Abstract

The Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) is caused by acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) and has been spread around the world for ten months. COVID-19 already caused more than 660,000,000 cases, with 6,670,000 deaths. The epidemic has not yet stabilized at the current time. With the change in the weather, it is not known if there will be a seasonal change of COVID-19. Will the COVID-19 epidemic continues or slows spread later on? It’s shown that the weather, especially temperature and humidity, is one of the crucial factors for the spreading of infectious diseases.
The mode of transmission of SARS-CoV-2 includes respiratory droplets within a long distance of 2m or by contaminated surfaces through contact transmission. Since the genomic structure of SARS-CoV-2 is like other coronaviruses such as HCoV-OC43 and HCoV-HKU1, it is hypothesized that the pathogenesis is probable the same.
In 2007, Lowen AC et al. found that aerosol spread of the influenza virus depends on the ambient temperature and relative humidity using guinea pig as a model. High temperature and humidity expurgated the transmission of the influenza virus. Because air holds more moisture at a warm temperature, respiratory droplets in cough or sneezes drop to the ground when it is much heavier at the time of increased humidity in the summer season. (To be continued).

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