Whether it is hot or cold does not affect the coronavirus in any way. On the other hand, temperature plays a role in human behavior, our travel habits and the number of people we meet, which are the main factors in the spread of the virus.
-1604404069.jpg "The weather does not affect the coronavirus … but it does affect the epidemic")
- The coronavirus fears neither heat nor cold. On the other hand, temperatures have an effect on us.
- Depending on the weather, we travel more and meet more people, the two factors that favor the spread of the virus.
At the very beginning of the pandemic, many were convinced that the heat would weaken the virus, but the weather proved them wrong. If the weather has an influence on the environment in which we live, it has no effect on the virus itself. Researchers from the University of Texas at Austin (USA) have shown that temperature and humidity do not play a significant role in the spread of Covid-19. The results were published on October 26 in theInternational Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health.
For the researchers of this study, the weather is a combination of temperature and the humidity it generates. This weather, whether hot or cold, does not affect the virus. On the other hand, it plays a role in the behavior that we humans adopt on a daily basis. Thus, when the temperatures are hot like in summer, we tend to prefer airy places, while in winter, when the weather gets colder, we prefer to stay in closed places.
Temperature affects people, not the virus
Scientists analyzed the evolution of the weather in different countries and regions of the world, between March and July 2020. They also compared the spread of the coronavirus with human behaviors and people’s travel and transport habits, using the data cell phones.
By combining all the data, the researchers found that the weather had almost no influence on the virus. On the other hand, travel and the time people spend away from home are the two main factors contributing to the growth of Covid-19, with a respective importance of 34% and 26%. Another important point is urban density, which accounts for 13%.
Analyzing human behavior rather than conducting laboratory experiments
According to Maryam Baniasad, a doctoral student at Ohio State University and co-author of the study, “assumptions about how coronaviruses would react over time are largely based on laboratory studies of related viruses. When you study something in the lab, it’s a supervised environment. It is difficult to adapt it to society.”
For his colleague Dev Niyogi, professor of engineering at the University of Texas at Austin and director of research, one of the main lessons of this pandemic is the importance of analyzing phenomena on a human scale, in life. daily, not in the laboratory.
“We looked at the outlook for weather and climate as a system we’re shrinking to see how it might affect humans. Now we do the reverse, we take the system and expand it, starting at the scale of human exposure and then working outward. This is a new paradigm that we will need to study virus exposure,” concludes the professor.
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