Johns Hopkins professor to study how climate and environmental elements influence the spread of COVID-19

Ben Zaitchik, a professor of Earth and planetary sciences at Johns Hopkins University, is available to speak with the media about the vigorous research still needed to definitively determine if and how climate, environmental and meteorological elements influence the spread of COVID-19. Zaitchik is leading an international task force of the World Meteorological Organization to develop best practices for producing accurate assessments on the potential impact of weather on the disease. He is also working on a NASA applied sciences project to investigate the possible link. “There is both an urgent need and a unique opportunity to track and characterize the sensitivity of disease transmission to background climate conditions and to seasonal factors,” states a summary of Zaitchik’s NASA efforts. Questions about seasonal variability and transmission differences across climate zones are “already much debated and are highly uncertain.” There are reasons to expect that transmission of a respiratory viral disease like COVID-19 might increase under the colder, drier conditions of winter, but at this stage evidence on this point is mixed.” Ben Zaitchik, Professor, Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Johns Hopkins University Many studies that concluded cold weather will spur another major wave of C”OVID-19 this winter have […]

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