The coronavirus will weaken, with the hot season? “No signal indicates that in the summer will disappear as the normal flu, warns the World Health Organization. Some clues, however, suggest that the spring games at our side. The flu viral are more efficient with the cold and dry climate. The Sars epidemic, in 2003, came to a halt with the summer season. The body with the hot weather, it defends better against infections of the airways. “And they are decreasing cases of influenza — noted Silvio Brusaferro, president of the Institute of Health — giving symptoms similar to the coronavirus and confuse the diagnosis.” None of these factors alone can stop a new virus that is the immune system tight. But any help at this stage is welcome.
Not to lower the guard
“Who speaks to the whole world, while the spring is coming only in our hemisphere,” noted Giancarlo Icardi, who teaches Hygiene at the university of Genoa. “The message to everyone is to not lower the guard. The heat alone would not be enough anyway.” The Geneva-based organisation, and its director, the ethiopian Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus , some days are engaged then in a skirmish with the president of the Usa, Donald Trump, who had minimized, saying: “The virus will disappear with the summer like a cold”. Too much optimism may weaken the containment. “There are Countries that take the epidemic under leg,” he rebuked Ghebreyesus.
map: outbreaks in real-time
The precedent of Sars
The outbreak of Sars is “big sister” of the current. The two coronaviruses share 79% of the genome. Appeared in Southern China in November 2002, a winter, very dry. Also in Hubei, this year has had the least rain of the last 40 years. The International Journal of Environmental Research has published the parallel between the environmental factors of the two epidemics: in April 2003, Sars began to brake. In July, the epidemic is contained. “But be careful”, warns Icardi. “Measures were taken strict hygiene and containment. The heat may have helped, but it has not been decisive”.
Their, creatures, cold
The Sun Yat-Sen University in China compared the temperatures of over 400 cities in China during the quarantine in January-February and the flu, noting that in the days of rigid, and the epidemic was traveling a little faster. “Viruses love the cold,” says Giorgio Palù, virologist at the university of Padua. “When we have a fever, the temperature rises to block their replication. Birds and bats, which can reach 40 degrees celsius, are home to viruses such as tanks, but without becoming ill”. A temperature above 21 degrees, which makes the microbes progressively less active. “The 4 coronaviruses in man cause colds become less frequent in winter,” note Palù. “To keep them, in the lab, we keep them in the freezer at — 80°C”.
Us, take advantage of the hot
for our body and, conversely, more effective defences in the heat. “The immune system works less in the winter,” says Palu. “The mucus in the airways is less fluid and the cilia that protect us from microorganisms on the outside are less mobile”. The third coronavirus of the new millennium, the Mers, may sparigliare our beliefs, being born in 2012 among dromedary camels in the Middle East. “But it was never transmitted from human to human efficiently,” noted Icardi. “You may be the exception that confirms the rule”.
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