Earlier this month, Africa gave the 1 million mark for the number of recorded cases of COVID-19. Australia has imposed its second lockdown in Melbourne as cases spiked in key urban areas.
In addition to the obvious humanitarian concerns, why should the US be affected by these events? Because the southern hemisphere is deep in its winter season, and the progress of the virus on colder continents could be a precursor to horror to come as America and the Northern Hemisphere reach their first full fall and winter since this coronavirus was discovered.
For the time being, a search warrant issued by government officials in the United States suggests that little attention is being paid to the south. This is a mistake.
Unfortunately, a search for government statements by US officials is currently suggesting that not much attention is being paid to the south. This is an error.
South Africa is having a very difficult time. The farther we go on the African continent, the colder the weather. Sure enough, South Africa, which passed the 500,000 mark of confirmed cases of coronavirus on August 1, has registered more than half of the cases on the entire African continent, despite its population being barely 5 percent of the total of the continent.
The prevalence is due to a combination of factors, including poverty, poor living conditions and poor health care options. But one reason for this spread could also be the weather. Daytime temperatures in Johannesburg average 36 degrees in the middle of summer, while in northern Lagos, Nigeria, average temperatures do not drop below 72 degrees.
Australia’s main population centers are now roughly the same length as South Africa, as that country is also moving into the heart of its winter season. It is a pity that Australia’s second largest city, Melbourne, closed for a second time for six weeks in early July, although officials warned it could be extended. Night temperatures have dropped to the low 40s – the average in August.
We can not say for sure that these data points are related, but we should certainly try to determine if they are.
This can all feel removed from the immediate challenges facing U.S. officials. But the global community is much more concerned.
“The entire international community and WHO have been nervous,” said Linfa Wang, director of the Emerging Infectious Diseases Program at Duke-NUS Medical School in Singapore, Bloomberg. “We have always said that the world will see very closely what is happening in New Zealand and Australia in the Southern Hemisphere.”
There are a number of reasons why the coronavirus could spread faster in cold weather, but without hard data, scientists treat herbaceously. For one thing, research suggests that respiratory viruses transmit more rapidly and droplets that carry them remain more viable in the cold weather of winter and lower humidity.
A study by researchers from the University of Sydney published in the journal Transboundary and Emerging Diseases pointed to “an association between lower humidity and an increase in locally distorted positive cases. Researchers discovered a 1 percent decrease in humidity could increase the number of COVID-19 cases” increase 6 percent. “
“COVID-19 is likely to be a seasonal disease that recurs during periods of lower humidity,” student member Michael Ward said in a press release. “We have to think if it’s winter time, it could be COVID-19 time.”
There are also a host of behavioral differences between the seasons that could contribute to spikes. Indeed, the tendency of more people clustered in confined spaces to stay warm during the winter months makes the spread of the coronavirus unexpected.
“Certain viruses like influences have a seasonality,” Jennifer Nuzzo, a former scientist at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, told me in an interview. “Some people think it’s humidity. Some people think it’s temperature. Some people think it’s behavior, and which of it is the most important is not known. Did they all figure it out? That’s not known either. So one concern. is potential that if we are more often indoors and more likely to cough at each other – as a result, we could see more household transfers. “
Indeed, some research suggests that extreme social distance and other control measures may be needed by 2022 as COVID-19 ebbs and flows with the seasons.
“We have projected that recurrent winter outbreaks of SARS-CoV-2 are likely to occur after the initial, most severe pandemic wave,” Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health researchers Stephen Kissler and Christine Tedijanto and their colleagues wrote in the journal Science. “Absent other interventions, an important metric for the success of social distance is whether critical care capacity is exaggerated. To prevent this, longer or intermittent social distance may be necessary in 2022.”
But, the researchers added, “a resurgence in contagion could possibly be as late as 2024.”
Although we do not have as much research on COVID-19 as we would like, scientists do have many studies examining the behavior of viruses such as the Spanish flu.
Although we do not have as much research on COVID-19 as we would like, scientists do have many studies examining the behavior of viruses such as the Spanish flu – a flu strain that was responsible for a deadly pandemic a century ago . At the time, there was no vaccine treatment, nor for that matter as beneficial monitoring of the spread, but it is believed that as many as 500 million people – a third of the world population at present – were infected and between 20 million and 50 million died in the course of three waves of the virus.
The deadliest, second wave arrived in Africa in early August 1918 when soldiers and workers returning from World War I in Europe rapidly spread the disease, which during the winter season from the seaboats to the interior of the continent hovered. Then, as now, South Africa itself was one of the five most affected peoples, with 5 percent of the country’s population dying.
This year, there has also been some concern that under-testing and under-reporting of seasonal impact in the southern hemisphere could affect our preparation, as the US could potentially fight two viruses simultaneously. (The U.S. and Europe are looking at numbers from the Southern Hemisphere following indications of the potential intensity of the next seasonal flu cycle further north.)
Director General of the World Health Organization Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said his researchers had seen a “dramatic reduction” in influenza testing by 2020, including a 62 percent decrease in the number of specimens sent to WHO labs. As Johns Hopkins senior analyst and research fellow Matthew Shearer wrote in July, this suggests “it’s critical that public health and health care systems develop plans for a variety of scenarios.”
On July 12, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa declared, “The storm is upon us,” the Financial Times reported. Even then, the confirmed cases of South Africa were those recorded in Italy or Germany, and were trending upwards.
In Soweto township outside Johannesburg deeply affected, Thabo Nko, a local entrepreneur, told the Economist that he did 20 funerals a week, 10 times his normal total. With the nearest cemeteries, he buried people 30 miles away.
Africa needs more help as it slows down the spread of COVID-19 and flu across the continent. But the problems in the southern hemisphere do not exist in a vacuum. The developed nations could learn a lot from the experiences of the developing world as summer turns to fall, then soon after winter.
But will the US, which has so far failed several times to advance the spread of COVID-19, pay attention in time?
