Can we still “eradicate” the corona virus?

It is one of the favorite topics of President Trump related to the Corona virus: You should enjoy the sun, it is bad for the viruses. He expressed the hope several times that this virus will disappear in the summer. “Indeed, could warmth and UV radiation have a certain, but probably not a very strong, effect, ”says the infectiologist Robert Krause from the MedUni Graz. At least you can see that with other viruses that trigger respiratory infections. But also the four long known “old” Corona virusesthat trigger colds do not go away completely in summer: “We always detect individual infections.”

“There is reason to believe that the SARS-CoV-2 virus spreads a little more efficiently in winter than in summer,” wrote the Harvard epidemiologist Marc Lipsitch in Science. “But that alone will not be enough to stop the transmission.”

Undetected spread?

The virologist sees it similarly Christian Drosten in his NDR podcast: Probably a new, pandemic virus due to the summer effect “not very strongly stopped, but a little bit”. Rather, he fears that the disease could spread slowly among the population if infection chains are not followed consistently and measures are loosened too quickly: “And suddenly you have a wave of infection within a month that you hadn’t expected.” And further: “That’s why I have to say, I regret seeing these days so much that we are just about to take this lead here Germany maybe completely gamble away. “

–