Covid-19 favours cold temperatures; could come in a second wave – The Wall Street Journal

Just more than a century ago in 1918, the Spanish flu wiped out more people than all the civilian and soldier fatalities of World War I and it did not come in only one wave; a second more deadly wave was followed by a third one, killing more people before it finally subsided in the northern summer of 1919. Historians believe that the second wave of Spanish flu was "a mutated virus spread by wartime troop movements". There are several scientists who are predicting that the coronavirus would also resurge in the autumn in the northern parts of the world, if it is not checked by medical controls and that it could as the Wall Street Journal reports break out annually or sporadic in the future. The fact that scientists also found that the coronavirus tends to cluster in cool, dry seasonal weather like other flu viruses may offer some relief to countries in the Northern Hemisphere such as Italy and the United Kingdom, where cases are still spreading rapidly. Spring may bring relief to them, but it is not good news for South Africa where the nights are starting to become colder. Robert Lee Hotz writes in the WSJ that scientists have found that the most severe outbreaks of Covid-19 "clustered in narrow band of consistently similar weather across the Northern Hemisphere" with temperatures between 5 and 11 degrees Celsius. – Linda van Tilburg

Coronavirus outbreaks could become seasonal woe, some researchers suggest

By Robert Lee Hotz

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