Coronavirus May Become A Seasonal High Risk Infection: UN

Coronavirus has brought the entire world to a standstill. Lakhs have died after contracting the COVID-19 infection. Now, it looks like COVID-19 is going to develop into a seasonal disease.

The coronavirus surfaced in China a year ago and there are a number of conspiracy theories doing the rounds over where the disease started. To date, a total of 2.7 million people have succumbed to the infection.

The 16-member team set up by the UN World Meteorological Organization pointed out that respiratory viral infections are often seasonal, "in particular the autumn-winter peak for influenza and cold-causing coronaviruses in temperate climates." 

It said in a statement, "This has fuelled expectations that, if it persists for many years, Covid-19 will prove to be a strongly seasonal disease."
Task team co-chair Ben Zaitchik of the earth and planetary sciences department at The John Hopkins University in the United States said that "At this stage, the evidence does not support the use of meteorological and air quality factors as a basis for governments to relax their interventions aimed at reducing transmission."

He pointed out that during the first year of the pandemic, infection in some places increased in warm seasons, and there is no evidence that this couldn't happen again in the coming year.

But it remained unclear whether meteorological elements had a meaningful influence on transmission rates under real-world conditions.

The preliminary evidence suggests that poor air quality increases Covid-19 mortality rates, but not that pollution directly impacts the airborne transmission of SARS-CoV-2.