Hyderabad: As the number of COVID-19 cases surges in the country and the winter season is soon to come the World Health Organization (WHO) global health experts believe that the cold weather could trigger a second wave of the pandemic–possibly much worse than the first one.
While there may be a high degree of uncertainty over how the virus will behave in colder temperatures, early reports suggest that it may survive longer during the winters. According to a report published in The Print, Klaus Stohr, an infectious disease expert who previously worked with WHO, maintains that “the epidemiological behavior of this virus will not be that much different from other respiratory diseases. During winter, they come back.”
It is a rather grim reminder of the fact that the world as a collective unit needs to be well-prepared to tackle another wave of the pandemic, which may potentially be more severe than the one we are battling currently. According to modeling done by the Academy of Medical Sciences, UK, the winter may be an extremely challenging time this year, suggesting that peak in hospital admissions and deaths in January/February 2021 of a similar magnitude to that of the first wave in spring 2020.