26/12/2023–|Last updated: 12/26/202301:33 PM (Mecca time)
Among the many things that the Covid-19 pandemic has changed in our lives, Cold viruseswhich no longer differentiates between winter and summer, cold and warm.
The study was conducted by researchers from the Instrumentation and Particle Physics Laboratory in Lisbon, Portugal, and was published in the scientific journal PLOS ONE, and I wrote about it. Newsweek.
By analyzing disease data from the United States and Canada between 2016 and 2023, researchers found that winter germs are no longer limited to cold seasons.
Co-author of the research, Irma Varela Lacheras, said that before the Corona epidemic, weather conditions such as seasonal change in temperature and humidity played the dominant role in explaining the work of all these viruses, but during the epidemic period, it was human mobility that played the main role in explaining the dynamics. Viral, which overcame the effects of weather conditions.
Human mobility refers to other things such as mobility, closures and school holidays.
Through their research, the team saw that before 2020, the seasonal interplay between these two factors existed in a delicate balance manifested in a winter surge of respiratory germs.
Winter germs
But that balance has been thrown out of whack by the Covid pandemic, creating year-round winter germs and a change in the viral dynamic that researchers say may never be the same again.
The researchers found that although seasonal germs like influenza have seasonality, winter is neither necessary nor sufficient for these viruses to spread.
While summer flu may seem like a minor inconvenience, these changing viral dynamics raise serious public health concerns, potentially leading to unexpected spikes in viral infections and resulting hospitalizations.
“It is clear that we need to study more about the biology and dynamics of these viruses, including possible interactions between them,” research leader Joana Gonçalves de Sa said in a statement.
“Infections previously thought to be winter seasonal can appear year-round, and this has important consequences for respiratory virus surveillance and for public health in general,” she added.
