February 27, 2020

expert comments about COVID-19 coronavirus and seasonality

Comment on the seasonality of the current coronavirus outbreak. 

Dr Michael Skinner, Reader in Virology, Imperial College London, said:

“My considered opinion (with no guarantees until we know more) is that its physical nature means that it will probably become seasonal when it eventually settles down to the normal patterns of transmission we see for the other human respiratory coronaviruses (i.e. in a population that consists of immune and immunologically naive individuals).

“That does not mean that it will follow seasonal dynamics during the larger epidemics we are currently beginning to see in some countries – there may be just too many people infected so that most transmission is short range and less subject to environmental constraints.

“It’s also worth appreciating that flu shows seasonal dynamics in the temperate regions of each hemisphere but is not seasonal in tropics/sub-tropics (where humidity might benefit the virus and where seasons are far less evident, at least in terms of temperature).”

All our previous output on this subject can be seen at this weblink:

http://www.sciencemediacentre.org/tag/covid-19

The SMC also produced a Factsheet on COVID-19 which is available here:

https://www.sciencemediacentre.org/smc-novel-coronavirus-factsheet/

Declared interests

None received.