Summer unlikely to see drop in COVID-19 cases: Chinese expert

Beijing: A Chinese expert of infectious disease Monday said it was not likely that the number of COVID-19 cases would drop significantly in the summer worldwide.

Although the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) virus disappeared in the summer in 2003, this novel coronavirus, which had killed over 200,000 people so far across the globe, appeared to be very different from the past viruses, Director of the Infectious Disease Department at the Peking University First Hospital Wang Guiqiang said at a news briefing held here.

“It is believed that this virus is sensitive to heat and the temperature of boiling water can kill it, but natural temperatures cannot reach that high,” he said and added, judging from the current global epidemic situation, it was unlikely that the virus would die away in summer.

Wang informed that another outbreak of COVID-19 was possible when people start gathering in the autumn.

“What is important at this moment is to take unified global efforts to contain the virus because if one country fails to control it effectively, other countries will be affected, and if the world doesn’t work together, any country may be prone to see a reoccurrence of new cases all year around,” he added.

Head of the Institute of Pathogen Biology at the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences and Peking Union Medical College Jin Qi said it was wrong to take the SARS mindset and believe COVID-19 would go away in the summer as SARS did in 2003.

“These two viruses are very different. For example, people infected by SARS had a clear high fever but COVID-19 cases may be asymptomatic or only show very mild symptoms, meaning a large group of people can hardly be diagnosed,” he added.

Based on these facts, he said it could be concluded that it was very likely that COVID-19 would coexist with humans for a very long period of time.