Is the new strain of corona virus susceptible to heat? Skimming the map supplies the idea that it is, and many unpublished research suggest that heat might slow down the virus.
If so why raising temperature indoors to say around 30 C or more is not among the WHO recommendations to cut down possible transmission of this virus indoors?
For instance in Iraq people set their AC up to 30 C at winter, even though the winter season in Iraq is not that cold. I heard that people in NY and other places set their indoor temperature to around 21 C while they are living in a rather harsh winter season, 21 C seems to be a very nice temperature level for the virus to thrive on surfaces indoors, or even to be transmitted through air indoors, and thereby easing its transmission.
To re-iterate my question:
Why the WHO and other CDC services are not advocating setting temperature indoors to 30 C or higher coupled with increasing hydration and frequent drinking of water and liquids to keep the throat moist, at least in cold places that are hit hard by the virus?
We have so far no plausible and established insights with regard to the influence of higher temperatures on virus transmission and virus survival. Certainly, survival will also depend on humidity. 30 °C indoors is rather hard to tolerate, especially for older people.
why older people in Iraq welcome it then? They do it every winter! Perhaps it's because Iraqis are used to high temperatures. If you just look at the coronvirus map you'll see a consistent finding indicating that the virus is thriving in cold sites more than in hot spots, and this is consistent wide across the world, with few counter-examples, this by itself serves to exclude confounders, and does point to the beneficial effect of high temperatures. So there is sketchy evidence! And that by itself points to possible role of heat. Now we can't wait till firm evidence is established because that might take time and meanwhile the virus would claim lots of lives, so we need to act under the benefit of doubt and weigh matters in cost versus benefit manner. I see that the balance goes towards giving it a try!!! I mean to start elevating temperatures indoors especially in heavily affected cold areas like NY. This might slow down the transmission of the virus and thus might probably save thousands of lives, and that's what matters! I don't see there is any reason why the WHO and the CDC are not advocating it? If people cannot tolerate such temperatures then at least they can elevate it to the maximum tolerable temperature they can withstand, this is better than doing nothing, they can do it room by room, they can gradually elevate it over several days degree by degree so that they can become accustomed to it gradually, they must do something towards that, its better than nothing done!
IF it is not tolerable, how we are always doing it in IRAQ in winters? We have old people you know. They tolerate it very well! And actually ask for it!
If we wait till conformation we are going to lose lives. Show much lose of life should we tolerate before confirming such a simple safe measure? The real question why should we?
A new virus comes with new challenges. As you know, in Iraq screening is flimsy and I guess in most countries with high temperatures. However, the overall impression is better than countries with colder climates.
There are several pre-prints pointing to an effect of temperature (a positive one) as you may have found sir.
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.12.20034728v3#disqus_thread
Ecological studies are the only evidence now, and until the experimental studies will be conducted, let's hope for the best.
Whilst there is still no evidence on the temperatures playing a big role, I also want to think that environmental factors such as air pollution might make Corona virus susceptible to other cities/nations compared to others. I feel there has to be research on: air pollution and corona virus?
Why there is a sharp drop in the numbers of daily new active cases over the last week in Iraq? What noticeably changed in Iraq is the temperature. It raised up by around 5 C- 7 C from that of prior month. The drop in newly detected cases is a strong one from the range of 44 - 91 in the last week to the range of 47 -15 this week, with consistent drop over the last 5 days; actually in the last 3 days it was consistently below 30 the only thing that changed is the temperature wide across Iraq. So it appears that temperature matters, and I think indoor temperatures also matter.
My intake on the WHO recommendations on temperature is the virus attack on healthy cells by degradation of the protein chains. For the indoor environment (homes, refugee tents, dorms) we cannot stimulate a hospital/sterile setting to maintain as a constant standard for everyone to implement.
@ Alshima Shuaib, We can do it at homes, work places, courts , stations, etc.. why not? at least we can worm up our indoors. If the virus high spread is due to cough aerosols then those might have similar physical characteristics to those of influenza which are usually destroyed by extremes of temperatures 30C. That said, then increasing indoor temperature, without inducing wind currents, might be helpful, if people can avoid dehydration and are well enough to withstand it, since a lot of the transmission can occur actually indoors. In most countries that encounter this virus the spread is more in the less hot areas (except the very cold < 5 C). ALL the major hits are in cold areas actually. Hot areas on the map especially those not having effective air-conditioning, like the Caribbean and some African countries seem to fair much better than other countries.
Sarudzai Chiwa , If high temperatures should prove to have strong effect on aerosol mediated transmission of the virus (which might be the fast mode of transmission of it), then I'd say that air pollution is a good thing? I mean when curfew came in place, cars are not there, smoke from factories is no longer there, so this mean that temperatures might start to drop, which might favor viral transmission really, so matters might be on the opposite side? In that setting we may need to encourage global worming??? I mean temporally to kill the virus.
Essam Al-Sibahee , Hi Essam, thank you for the reference. And yes there are many studies, but really our country seems to be the best evidence. I don't see any factor why Iraq is relatively speaking having so low counts of infected people? The only thing I can think of are indoor temperatures in Iraq, they are high at winter, but not at spring where the disease became active, and nowadays temperatures are becoming higher and as you see new active cases are dropping with it, and they'll be high at summer largely because we have power shortages so houses would be also hot indoors for many hours a day, unlike other gulf and more affluent countries where actually summer makes no difference for their indoor temperatures since they use power AC's to actually drop it to 18 or so. Now if at summer, the disease counts drops significantly, then clearly this would attest (in my own view) to the role of high temperatures affecting its spread. And elevation of indoor temperatures in temperate and cold countries might be a good idea and ought to actually be tested as soon as possible, to prevent a future disaster next year.
Hassan Izzeddin Sarsak
if where you work (Saudi Arabia) people just refrain from setting their AC's temperature down below 30 C or below 27 C at these times and summer and not use the drying function (humidity reducer) function on their AC's whether at their homes, at work, at public vehicles, stations, etc...I think this is practical and can be done! It might possibly reduce viral transmission which is high in Saudi Arabia, and also in Qatar, actually data from such a trial may benefit the whole world.
I am not an expert, but if that is the case shouldn’t hotter climates should have less cases. I have not see evidence that confirms that. We have to be careful to not give out the wrong information...there were people who believed consuming alcohol would prevent the virus. We know that is not true.
