The coronavirus has been spreading quickly worldwide. However, there are some claims that its transmission rates might fall during the summer, and will rise again in winter.
If coronavirus transmissions really stop during the warm weather, that shouldn’t make you believe that the outbreak has come to an end. Scientist warn that it is most likely that it will come back in winter, and the reduction of infected should be used for preparation for the next rise of the virus. The scientific model predicts that it could infect 100 times more people.
The transmission rates and the effects of seasonal variation on COVID-19, have been modelled by research scientists from universities in Basel and Stockholm. Their model suggests that „a small peak in early 2020“ which we are experiencing at the moment, will be followed by „a larger peak in winter 2020-2021“, and those papers are undergoing peer-review.
One of the paper’s co-authors, Dr Emma Hodcroft, told Sky News that the model wasn’t an unreasonable scenario, but it was hard to have exact numbers of infected when the virus rises again. She added that the numbers shouldn’t be the top of our concerns, saying: „These predictions are ones we’ve made based on assumptions about how seasonality affects transmission, based on how it is known to affect other coronaviruses.“
It is important to predict the virus’ transmission and how it could be affected by the change in season.
Dr Hodcroft also said: „The main takeaway is, if seasonality does decrease in the summer time, then we should be cautious still because we could still see a bigger peak in winter. If we aren’t aware of this possibility then we could be caught off guard when winter comes again.“
The model also suggests that COVID-19 could become a regular, seasonal occurrence, just like the flu.
So far, there is a total of over 150,000 confirmed cases of the coronavirus COVID-19. and over 6,000 deaths.
