Warm weather probably won’t slow COVID-19 transmission much
The arrival of spring in the Northern Hemisphere has raised hopes that warmer and wetter weather might slow or even stop the COVID-19 pandemic, at least until fall. But don’t plan on that happening, U.S. health experts say. “One should not assume that we are going to be rescued by a change in the weather. You must assume that the virus will continue to do its thing,” Anthony Fauci, director of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in Bethesda, Md., and a member of the White House coronavirus task force, said during an interview April 9 on ABC’s Good Morning America. A report released April 7 by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine also says that, while much about the virus remains unknown, summer temperatures probably won’t do much to dampen the spread of the virus. While scientists still don’t know if touching shared surfaces is a major driver of the pandemic, compared with direct person-to-person transmission (SN: 3/4/20; SN:...