Temperature, humidity may do little to halt the spread of Covid
nNEW DELHI: Higher temperature and humidity may do little to arrest the spread of the coronavirus pandemic, a new study has found, adding to a growing body of literature that indicate that the correlation between local climate conditions and virus transmission is weak.
The study -- conducted by scientists at Princeton University and the US National Institutes of Health and published in the journal Science on Monday -- also suggested the lack of sizeable immunity to the Sars-cov-2 virus and the speed of the pathogen ensured that climate and humidity had limited impact on transmission.
“It doesn’t seem that climate is regulating spread right now,” said Rachel Baker, a postdoctoral scholar in the Princeton Environmental Institute and first author of the paper. “We project that warmer or more humid climates will not slow the virus at the early stage of the pandemic.”
A batch of studies during the initial surge of the pandemic had held out hope that drier and colder climates are more suited to the virus, and that the weather in tropical countries may hobble the spread to the disease.
But this paper joins previous research from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the US National Academies of Sciences (NAS) that say while there is some evidence that Sars-cov-2 transmits less efficiently in higher ambient temperature and humidity, this does not lead to a significant decrease in disease spread without major interventions, such as personal protection and social distancing.
The scientists ran three scenarios. The first assumed that coronavirus has the same climate sensitivity as influenza. The second and third scenarios assumed the virus had the same climate dependence as OC43 and HKU1, which cause common cold and are of the same betacoronavirus genus as Sars-cov-2.
In all three scenarios, climate became a significant factor when large portions of the population were immune or resistant to the virus. “The more that immunity builds up in the population, the more we expect the sensitivity to climate to increase,” Baker said.
The scientists emphasised the need for more research in diverse locations and said the results didn’t account for potential crossimmunity from other coronavirus infections .