Summer Is Coming, but the Virus Won’t Be Going

Summer Is Coming, but the Virus Won’t Be Going

夏天要來了，但病毒沒有要走

【摘要2020.5.29.自由】◎張沛元

"Everybody hopes for seasonality" when it comes to the coronavirus pandemic, Peter Juni of the University of Toronto acknowledged. Maybe, just maybe, the summer will diminish the spread of Covid-19.

（加拿大）多倫多大學的彼得．朱尼坦承，提到新冠病毒全球大流行，「人人都期盼季節性（能發揮影響力）」。也許，只是也許，夏天能夠減緩武漢肺炎的傳播。

But a new study, by Dr. Juni, an epidemiologist, and his colleagues in Canada and Switzerland, offers very little encouragement for warm-weather worshipers. In countries around the world, his research found, variations in heat and humidity had little to no effect on the spread of the pandemic. Differences in how the disease spread were instead strongly associated with public health measures like social distancing and school closures.

但病毒學家朱尼博士及其在加拿大與瑞士的同僚所做的一份新研究，給不了熱愛溫暖天氣的人太多鼓舞。他（朱尼）的研究發現，在全球各國中，他的研究發現，溫度與濕度的變化對（武肺的）全球大流行沒有多少、甚至根本沒有影響。疾病如何傳播的差異，反而與諸如社交距離與關閉學校等公共衛生措施息息相關。

One reason is that most of the world’s population has no immunity to the virus. "This means the virus doesn’t need favorable conditions" to spread, Dr. Juni said.

（入夏無助於遏阻疾病／病毒傳播的）理由之一，在於全球人口大部分對該病毒都沒有免疫力。「這意味這個病毒不需要有對它有利的條件」也能傳播，朱尼博士說。

新聞辭典

when it comes to：慣用語，考慮到某特定人、事或行動時；提到…時，到了…的時候。例句：There’s nothing she doesn’t know when it comes to online shopping.（說到網購，她可是無所不知。）

diminish：動詞，減少、減小、降低。

have an/any/no effect on （someone or something）：慣用語，對某人或某事有／有任何／沒有影響。例句：Do you think the snowstorm will have any effect on voter turnout?（你覺得這場暴風雪會對投票率有任何影響嗎？）