Experts don’t expect warmer temps to help in the Coronavirus fight

NEW ORLEANS, La. (WVUE) - We’re approaching the first day of spring and usually the sunshine and blue-sky hints that cold and flu will be on the down swing.

“The only reason we call flu seasonal is because during wintertime people are indoors within 6 feet of each other and most likely to transmit respiratory droplet transmitted virus. We thought it was going to behave the same way,” says Dr. James Diaz

Diaz is a professor of public health and preventative medicine at LSU Health. He says unfortunately the more we learn about coronavirus the less experts like him think it will follow the same pattern.

“Animal coronaviruses can be seasonal and the ones that cause colds in little kids can be seasonal because these are the alpha corona viruses.”

Those cause about 30 percent of common colds usually in the winter.

“This one is different. It behaves very much like the SARS virus. It’s closely related to the original SARS virus which can occur at any time and the MERS virus, which is another beta coronavirus, occurs year-round.”

A world map showing the location of coronavirus cases show many hot and humid countries along the equator and in the southern hemisphere where Summer is just on the way out are still diagnosing new novel coronavirus cases.

“We’re not really sure, but we are warning people that even as the weather warms that they are still at risk of getting Covid-19 especially if they are exposed to large groups of people.”

There is hope that we will see fewer infections in the coming months.

“We know that China now is reporting fewer cases, last time I checked less than 100 cases a day, so that means they are on the downslope of their epidemic curve. We’re hoping that we get to the downslope of ours soon.”

If our prevention efforts of social distancing and staying away from large groups is successful.

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