A combination of human behavior and immunity, the environment, and SARS-CoV-2 itself explains why the virus surges during both hotter and colder months
It’s that time of year: a thick, oppressive heat blankets everything, people huddle inside air-conditioned homes, offices, shops and cafes for respite—and COVID is surging again.—though not a perfect metric because people aren't testing as much—has also increased, but hospitalizations have remained relatively low. Most viral respiratory infections, such as influenza, peak in the winter.
SARS-CoV-2 continues to evolve new variants. One rises to the fore every six months or so, according to Peter Chin-Hong, a professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, who specializes in infectious diseases. In recent weeks several new, as well as a newer variant called LB.1. These variants may be slightly more transmissible or better at evading the immune system than previous ones, Chin-Hong says.
It’s a persistent mystery why COVID spreads so efficiently in the summer as well as winter, whereas flu tends to be mostly a winter disease, says Linsey Marr, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Virginia Tech, who specializes in aerosol transmission of pathogens. “I’ve studied the seasonality of the flu for many years, and we have some hypotheses about why it peaks in the wintertime,” Marr says. One is that the flu virus survives better in dry conditions.
And then there’s the human immune system. People’s immunity to COVID may have waned since the last time they were vaccinated or infected in the fall or winter, making them more susceptible to getting sick. Fortunately, immunity from past exposure, in the form of memory T cells, keeps most people from getting severely ill. But waning antibodies mean people can still get infected.
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