月度归档： 2025 年 12 月

　　Editor’s note:

　　Some people think that Covid-19 will be like seasonal flu, and it will gradually disappear after the weather gets warmer, but some experts say it is too early to expect the weather to get warmer and curb the spread of coronavirus.

　　From an authoritative point of view, Michael Ryan, executive director of the World Health Organization’s health emergency project, said,Can’t count onCovid-19 will be like the flu virus.Disappear on its own in summer. Ceng Guang, an epidemiologist, also stressed that whether it was SARS 17 years ago or the current novel coronavirus, theirDisappearing depends on prevention and control, not climate.

　　With the warmer weather, will Covid-19 "die down"? How to judge the fate of Covid-19? Can climatic conditions affect the survival of Covid-19? Invited by China Association for Science and TechnologyShu Yuelong, Chairman of Virology Branch of Chinese Medical Association and Dean of School of Public Health, Sun Yat-sen University (Shenzhen)Answer for everyone.

▲ Covid-19 images taken by scanning and transmission electron microscope.

　　Shu Yuelong saidThe main reason why the virus will disappear in summer is based on the understanding of the superficial phenomenon of SARS epidemic in 2003, because SARS in 2003 was announced by the World Health Organization in July of that year, and the SARS virus did not appear again. However, we should not forget that when the SARS epidemic broke out that year, the whole world, especially China, also took strong prevention and control measures, including quickly finding cases for isolation, tracking the close crowd of each case for isolation and medical observation, etc., before the epidemic was successfully prevented and controlled.

　　The rising temperature may have a certain impact on the survival of the virus under natural conditions.For example, in temperate regions every summer, the low influenza activity is proof. Therefore, it is speculated that the rising temperature in summer mayReduce the epidemic intensity of the epidemic, butIt is unlikely to disappear naturally..

　　Novel coronavirus, which caused the epidemic, belongs to the same kind of virus as SARS virus, with some similarities, and the gene homology is about 80%. Using the same cell receptor ACE2, its original natural hosts may be bats.

　　However, there are many differences between them. For example, novel coronavirus is different from SARS virus in clinical manifestations, and SARS patients are mainly severe, so we can easily find SARS patients. However, patients in COVID-19 range from asymptomatic infection, mild pneumonia, pneumonia to severe pneumonia, and critically ill patients also show various clinical manifestations such as systemic multiple organ injury, and asymptomatic infection may also become the source of infection, which increases the difficulty for us to find the source of infection. The SARS epidemic is mainly caused by hospital infection and some super communicators, so it is easy to implement containment strategy; However, the COVID-19 epidemic has spread widely in communities around the world, which makes it more difficult to implement containment strategies.

　　At present, the economic, cultural and political systems of different countries are different, so it is difficult to reach a unified prevention and control strategy, and it is difficult to avoid the global epidemic of the virus.

　　Shu Yuelong judged that there are several possibilities for the fate of the virus:

　　First, the virus is only prevalent in the population, but its virulence is weakened, which only causes common cold symptoms in the population, similar to coronaviruses such as 229E and OC43 that are prevalent in the population.

　　Second, this winter has come back, and its pathogenicity and transmission have not changed significantly. However, with the improvement of the immune level of the population, the epidemic situation has gradually weakened, and the threat to people’s health has become less and less. It is expected that the vaccine will be successfully developed before the arrival of this winter, and the disease burden will be reduced and even its epidemic will be controlled by vaccination.

　　Third, the virus is not only popular among people, but also can spread to other animals across species. According to the distribution of ACE2 receptors, many animals can express ACE2 receptors, including nonhuman primates, ferrets, pigs and cats. It is not excluded that the virus will spread to other animals, thus evolving into a new zoonotic disease that will exist in nature for a long time. Therefore, the monitoring of Covid-19 in animals should be strengthened.

　　In short, the whole world should unite and adopt various prevention and control measures to contain and slow down the epidemic.Delay the epidemic of the virus, reduce the epidemic peak, thus reducing the impact on the medical system and buying time for the research and development of vaccine drugs.At the same time, it’s important to promote international technical cooperation,Accelerate the research and development of vaccines and drugsSo as to provide more technical means for epidemic prevention and control.

　　(finishing/Guangming. com reporter Zhan Wei)