https://toronto.citynews.ca/2020/03/11/qa-will-covid-19-go-away-on-its-own-in-warmer-weather/
Q&A: Will COVID-19 go away on its own in warmer weather?
by Adam Stiles and Victoria Revay
Posted Mar 11, 2020 1:30 pm EDT
Last Updated Mar 11, 2020 at 5:58 pm EDT
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As more information becomes available about the spread of novel coronavirus and the disease it causes, COVID-19, some have suggested that it may follow seasonal cold and flu trends when it comes to how it acts in warmer weather.
Meteorologist Adam Stiles spoke with Dr. Isaac Bogoch, an infectious disease specialist and clinical researcher at Toronto General Hospital to get his perspective.
The interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.
Adam Stiles (AS): Let’s start by explaining what novel coronavirus is as opposed to a common virus
Dr. Bogoch (IB): Novel really means new, and this is new in a sense that we as humans have never known that this has existed. We really have only known this virus has existed since about three months ago – when it was first discovered. It has probably been around for a millennia. And then regulatory bodies decided to name it SARS COV-2.
AS: What is so unique about this strain or virus?
IB: The unique feature is that it’s brand new to us. We’re really learning a lot about its biology. We’ve only known it has existed for three months but we have a pretty good understanding.
AS: Is there enough commonality between this virus and ones that we’ve seen already leading into the spring? Will it follow a similar seasonality as North America gets into warmer temperatures?
IB: There are some not so unique features. It’s a respiratory virus. We sort of know other respiratory viruses, how they’re transmitted, how we protect ourselves. How we protect transmission in community settings so some of the same rules apply as well. It’s tough to know how this is going to play out. There are a few theories about what direction this is going to go. Some say it’s a pandemic and it will burn itself out and go away. Theory two is that we have year round low-level transmission of the virus. And theory three is that there is a global surge in cases and then it does die down and come back in winter. So this year will have a seasonal COVID-19 virus. No one really knows, it’s speculation.
Watch: How will warmer temperatures affect spread of COVID-19?
AS: As North America enters into summer, is it possible that this switches and becomes a southern hemisphere issue through our summers up here and their winters down there?
IB: The key thing we need to know is that it’s about vaccination. Because it is plausible that this will be sticking around for a while in some way or another and in order to protect ourselves we need to invest in a vaccine. This is really the long-term solution to this.
AS: So you’re saying that there is an initial introduction into a population and it has the potential to spread rapidly and sort of plateaus and may start following in the seasonal norms of what we’d see with the common cold or flu?
IB: No one really knows. That might align with the seasonality component but many of the normal rules aren’t being upheld in the context of a big epidemic. You recall in 2009 that the influenza virus, it was supposed to be a winter virus and it exploded in the summer. What we’re going to see is this rise in cases globally. At some point it’ll peak, and we’ll start to see a waning of cases, as it’s seen in China and Korea. Then it’s a big question mark. Is it going to peter out and die out or is it going to have low levels of transmission and come back in cooler months and winter time and much like we see seasonal influenza.
AS: Is there any speculation to how long that bright burn phase is? Are we talking about two more months or is it something that this could last six months on the initial phase?
IB: Nobody has a clue, but we think we do because we can model it. A lot of this depends on how the global response goes. If we really see some of the social distancing measures deployed and travel restrictions and methods that we know can slow down transmissions, this might prolong the epidemic. What it will do is blunt the peak of the epidemic and make it more of a flat curve. People might think, ‘well why would you want to prolong it?’ The reason you’d want to prolong it is because if you have these huge peaks in cases, that means even though a small proportion of people get really sick and need to be hospitalized, those peaks will result in a high burden of hospital use and that can overwhelm the health care system. It’s better to employ these control measures mainly through social distancing and flatten that peak so that it might be prolonged and you don’t get those big peaks in cases.
AS: Is there anything that comes into play with a virus like this and the weather changing or is it something more tied to people’s activity during those seasons?
IB: I honestly don’t know. We know that many coronaviruses are fond of colder temperatures, but in the context of the epidemic, it’s hard to say whether climate or temperature will have a role. So it’s really hard to know if that is going to be a major component to how this epidemic this plays out. If this virus stays around after this, epidemic temperature may come into play. Sadly, it’s a wait and see approach and we need to prepare for when weather does not affect the epidemic and we’re prepared for that as well.
AS: So what sort of preparation are we talking?
IB: We have to think about this on several fronts. One is the individual front, one is a health care system front and there is a larger organizational front. From a health care system standpoint, we need to have capacity in outpatient clinics so people don’t have to go to hospital for testing and don’t have to go to hospital for care because we know many people won’t need it. So stand-alone clinics are popping up around Canada and this keeps people out of hospitals. We need extended diagnostic testing which is happening and happened in Canada and we need to ensure we have appropriate a hospital capacity to mange a surge in cases.
From an organizational perspective, like businesses, companies and schools, we have to have flexibility. There may be policies to do social distancing so enabling people to work from home, do staggered or home school sessions to really changing how we go about day-to-day life. There needs to be a lot of flexibility ensuring people don’t come to work sick. Many companies have sick days and vacation days and now is not the time to be stingy.
