Does hot temperature kill coronavirus?

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The coronavirus pandemic continues. With no vaccine against the virus yet, humanity is hoping for warmer weather. Many experts believe that warming the air will prevent the spread of the virus. Meanwhile, some experts oppose the idea, arguing that air temperature will not destroy the pandemic.

In order to clarify this issue, "Daryo" appealed to scientists. Physicist Rustam Ashurov shared his thoughts on this.

Coronoviruses are far ahead of other similar viruses in terms of survival in a variety of environments and conditions. At a time when the nature of COVID-2019 is being intensively studied in laboratories around the world, people are mainly interested in one question: when will it retreat? Given that it takes time for vaccines and new antiviral drugs to go through the testing stages, the only hope for people’s survival will depend on rising temperatures.

According to many experts, COVID-2019 is as seasonal in nature as its related viruses and is not resistant to rising temperatures. But this hypothesis has not yet been experimentally proven in laboratories. Experiments on the resistance of COVID-2019 coronavirus to air temperature and humidity are currently underway and will be announced in the coming days. Until then, we will logically test this assumption through observations.

I can’t say anything about the mechanisms by which temperature affects an object (COVID-2019). We leave this work to the experts. And we take the easy way out ourselves. How is this virus currently feeling in hot countries? In this article we will look for the answer to this question. We call a hot temperature conditionally a temperature of 30 ° C and above.

We use two tools to gather this information online:

1. a site that displays weather information around the world map. I used Meteotrend.com;
2. a site that monitors data across the geography of coronavirus spread. My choice was Worldometeres.info.

So today there are 30 states where the temperature is above 24 ° C. We calculate the number of patients infected with the coronavirus COVID-2019 in these countries and the number of deaths from this virus. The data collected are shown in the table below.

States where temperatures above 30 ° C are observed

(weather data for March 24)

number	States	Temperature (° C)	Number of patients	Number of deaths
1	Barbados	30	17	—
2	Belize	30	1	—
3	Benin	31	2	—
4	Burkina Faso	38	99	4
5	Ghana	30	24	1
6	Guyana	30	19	1
7	Guinea	33	0	—
8	Cambodia	30	86	—
9	Cotte d'Ivoire	30	25	—
10	Cuba	30	35	—
11	Mali	38	0	—
12	Nauru	30	0	—
13	Niger	40	2
14	Nigeria	31	36	1
15	Panama	30	313	3
16	Paraguay	32	22	1
17	Salvador	31	3	—
18	somali	30	1	—
19	Sudan	33	2	1
20	Sierra Leone	31	0	—
21	Togo	31	18	—
22	Trinidad and Tobago	30	51	—
23	Central African Republic	31	0	—
24	Chad	39	1	—
General:		757		12

This means that a total of 24 people have been infected with the COVID-757 coronavirus in the 2019 countries we are studying. Twelve of them died. The last death was observed on March 12 in Nigeria. The 23-year-old Nigerian national returned from the UK in critical condition and died in Nigeria.

The average age of the dead is 65. Based on the data collected through an in-depth study of the patients in these 24 states, we come to the following conclusion.

In these countries, the disease is observed only in citizens from other countries and is not widespread within the state. In each case, they have seized it, despite obstacles we can scarcely imagine. "

Only two countries - Panama and Cambodia - have reported outbreaks. A common feature that binds these states is the relative humidity of the air. In Panama, the average is 80-81 percent, while in Cambodia it is 70 percent. According to experts, high relative humidity is a favorable environment for viruses. As the humidity decreases and the air dries out, the environment becomes more difficult for viruses. However, more people could have fallen ill in Cambodia. Because he was in no hurry to close the borders in Cambodia and at least took the Westerdam cruise to his port, where he was left stranded in the Pacific Ocean and found to have sick people on board. The borders of Cambodia were not closed even when the virus reached its peak in Southeast Asia. The first moves were only discussed on March 8th. In general, high temperatures in Cambodia are said to have played a positive role.

Why is weather temperature important?

The virus passes from the human body to another human body through an external transit environment. The degree of ease for this transit medium to carry the virus is directly proportional to the degree of its spread. That is, if the transit environment is conducive to the virus, it can be easily transmitted from one person to another. Conversely, the shorter its survival period in that environment, the shorter the virus spread. When moving through the air or on an object, the temperature of the air has a direct effect on the survival of the virus and shortens its lifespan by a certain amount.

You could say that human movement and travel in countries with high temperatures at the moment is not as high as in China, Europe and the United States. You are absolutely right. The first step in overcoming the COVID-2019 coronavirus is quarantine. Traffic and mobility should be limited. Perhaps the process would not have been easier in the early days of the epidemic when developed countries were able to reduce human movement and traffic to the level of the countries shown in the table. After all, we continue to wait for the weather to warm up while sitting at home.

The author's opinion may differ from the editorial point of view.