Why COVID Outbreaks Could Worsen This Winter

preprint server medRxiv on 10 September; the authors recommend that more stringent control measures might be required throughout winter season to minimize the threat of break outs.

In the future

If SARS-CoV-2 can survive better in cold conditions, it’s still challenging to disentangle that contribution from the result of people’s behaviour, states Kathleen O’Reilly, a mathematical epidemiologist at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. “Flu has actually been around for hundreds of years and the specific system as to why you have peaks of flu in the winter is still inadequately understood,” states O’Reilly.

And even if researchers had more reliable information for SARS-CoV-2, they would see just little or negligible seasonal effects so early in the pandemic, when much of the population is still susceptible, says Relman.

Gradually, nevertheless, seasonal results could play a more crucial part in driving infection patterns, as more individuals build up resistance to the infection. This might take up to 5 years through natural infection, or less if individuals are vaccinated, states Baker.

But whether a seasonal pattern emerges at all, and what it will look like, will depend on lots of aspects that are yet to be understood, consisting of the length of time resistance lasts, how long healing takes and how likely it is that people can be reinfected, says Colin Carlson, a biologist who studies emerging illness at Georgetown University in Washington DC.

This article is reproduced with permission and was first released on October 23 2020.