COVID patterns

 E-Mail Scientists, policymakers and healthcare workers are eager to discern to what extent COVID-19 may be seasonal. Understanding this aspect of the disease could guide our response to the pandemic. Researchers at UC Santa Barbara have found evidence that the spread of COVID-19 is sensitive to UV exposure. While this suggests that COVID-19 may vary with the seasons, there are other seasonal factors -- such as temperature, specific humidity and precipitation -- whose effects are uncertain given the available data. The results appear in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. "Related species of coronavirus -- like SARS from 2003 and MERS from 2012 -- turned out to have weak relationships with temperature and humidity, but were sensitive to UV radiation," said coauthor Kyle Meng, an environmental economist in UC Santa Barbara's economics department and at the campus's Bren School of Environmental Science & Management.