Coronavirus pandemic has caused a lot of stir all across the globe. In India, it has got onto people’s nerves with death toll to 10 and infected cases rising beyond 500. Seeing the urgency of this situation Prime Minister Narendra Modi has announced a nationwide lockdown for 21 days starting March 25.
According to many reputed scientific journals, new research has shown, it appears that a correlation exists between warm weather and a decrease in the transmission rate of the coronavirus.
If the climate conditions are extremely cold or very hot and humid, the virus is “largely absent,” the study showed.
The results of the study were reported by an American news agency Bloomberg News on Monday.
According to the study, people in tropical and polar climates are unlikely to see the local transmission of COVID-19 cases.
A microbiology and virology professor at St. Christopher’s Hospital for Children in Philadelphia, Dr Alan Evangelista, told an American News Network ABC News confirming the fact that studies he has conducted found results similar to the other studies.
Evangelista in his research has found out that, “As humidity levels increase, the viral droplet size is larger and settles out of the air rapidly.”
COVID-19 is believed to be spread by viral droplets that are injected into the air when a person coughs or sneezes, and them land on someone nearby.
“In contrast, in low humidity, there is rapid evaporation of respiratory droplets,” he continued. “They remain airborne for prolonged periods, increasing the time and distance over which transmission can occur.”
There are sufficient reports that do show the virus to spread at a lower rate in warmer places, other researchers also question whether weather conditions can actually have a great effect on the virus’ ability to spread.
“While an expectation of modest declines in the contagiousness of the novel coronavirus in warmer, wetter weather,” according to Dr Marc Lipsitch, a Harvard epidemiologist, “it is not reasonable to expect these declines alone to slow transmission enough to make a big dent.”
