Warm weather does not kill off COVID-19 or hamper its capability to spread--two separate studies have found.
The United States and Canadian researchers said the transmission change was only reduced by around 1.5% for every degree Fahrenheit above 77ºF (25ºC).
They analyzed more than 370,000 COVID-19 cases in heaps of different cities in North America, concludes 'summer isn't going to make this go away.'
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Summer won't let things pass
In one of the latest research, researchers from the University of Toronto checked out a total of more than 375,600 confirmed COVID-19 cases in the U.S. and Canada in March.
They compared the impact of temperature, humidity, college closures, restrictions of mass gatherings, and social distancing at the spread of the disease.
The results confirmed no link between temperature with an upward trend in infections and a negligible difference between humidity and cases.
"Summer [won't] make this go away, it's important people know that," said Professor Dionne Gesink, an epidemiologist at the Canadian university.
Meanwhile, Gesink said the more public health interventions an area had in place, the bigger the impact on slowing the epidemic growth.
The public health interventions, according to Gesink, are significant because the only thing health workers are working right now is to slow the epidemic.
Co-author Dr. Peter Jüni said their preliminary study suggested both latitude and temperature could play a role in killing COVID-19.
The team got the opposite result when they repeated the study under much more rigorous conditions, Jüni said. The study was published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal.
Weather plays only a secondary role
American researchers got a similar result in a paper that has yet to be posted in a journal or peered by other scientists.
Lead researcher Hazhir Rahmandad, from MIT Sloan School of Management, and his team analyzed virus transmission and weather statistics from at least 3,700 locations from December 2019 to April 2020.
They found a slight decrease transmission threat, about a 1.7% reduction in keeping with 1 degree Fahrenheit, as soon as temperatures rose above 77 degrees F.
"[While] high temperatures and humidity can moderately reduce the transmission rates of coronavirus, the pandemic is not likely to diminish solely due to summer weather,' Rahmandad said.
According to Rahmandad, policymakers and the public should remain vigilant in their responses to the health emergency.
He underscored that weather plays only a secondary role in the control of the pandemic.
Commenting at the findings, Dr Amesh Adalja, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security in Baltimore, told DailyMail the outcomes were not surprising.
Because of COVID-19 and without population immunity, Adalja said people couldn't expect to see a full suppression of transmission based on seasonality.
While certain environmental conditions might be less conducive to spread from surfaces during summer months, Adalja said people susceptible might not make much difference. The expert added, "person-to-person spread will continue."
"Even in summer, states [should] remain vigilant on the number of COVID-19 cases with full situational awareness on hospitalization rates to prevent hospitals from stress," Adalja said.
