Members of a scientific committee told the White House in a letter Tuesday that while lab-based studies support the claim that the virus that causes the COVID-19 disease is less effective at higher temperatures, “real world” studies are less conclusive, and warm weather might anyway not curb the spread much because so few people are immune.
The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) committee members said in the letter, which was addressed to Dr. Kelvin Droegemeier of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, that while controlled experiments showed temperature reduced the viability of the virus, studies done in the natural environment were subject to “significant caveats,” mostly around data quality, and time and location limitations.
