Note: This story is extracted from NASA’s Earth Observatory article, Could COVID-19 Have Seasons? And Could COVID-19 Have Seasons? Searching for Signals in Earth Data
In 400 BC, the great Greek physician Hippocrates offered the earliest known record of a seasonal respiratory disease; the “Cough of Perinthus”, was a winter disease that struck a port city in Greece. Symptoms included chills, fevers, laboured breathing, pneumonia (infection in one or both lungs, due to bacteria, viruses, and fungi), and sometimes death.
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Scientific tools have allowed to observe and explain the disease in ways that may have astonished Hippocrates. Explaining why some disease outbreaks have seasonal cycles, and predicting the timing of those cycles, remains a challenging problem.
Research has shown that over the years that some respiratory viruses have clear seasonal rhythms. For example, cases of a pandemic and several types of coronavirus are known to rise in the summer. Outbreaks of enteroviruses (a group of viruses that cause infectious illnesses which are usually mild) usually occur in the winter; some adenoviruses and rhinoviruses have no clear seasonal cycle.
The question that infectious disease experts and policymakers deal with is: how will SARS-CoV-2 behave?
NASA has joined in with other US and international agencies hunting for answers. For example, Johns Hopkins University researcher, Benjamin Zatichik is working on a NASA Earth Applied Sciences project, examining likely relationships between the spread of the coronavirus and seasonal shifts in temperature, humidity, rainfall, and other environmental variables. Benjamin hopes his work will clarify the role that weather and climate might play in influencing the spread of the virus.
