COVID-19 has a 21+ day incubation period, is contagious before you're symptomatic, and is possibly airborne (I haven't heard strong confirmation of that yet, but it's definitely more virulent).
Also from [0] however:
"Sunlight will cut the virus ability to grow in half so the half-life will be 2.5 minutes and in the dark it’s about 13m to 20m. Sunlight is really good at killing viruses. That’s why I believe that Australia and the southern hemisphere will not see any great infections rates because they have lots of sunlight and they are in the middle of summer. And Wuhan and Beijing is still cold which is why there’s high infection rates.
In regards to temperature, the virus can remain intact at 4 degrees or 10 degrees for a longer period of time. But at 30 degrees then you get inactivation. And High humidity the virus doesn’t like it either. That’s why I think Sars stopped around May and June in 2003 – that’s when there’s more sunlight and more humidity. The environment is a crucial factor. The environment will be unfavourable for growth around May. The evidence is to look at the common cold – it’s always during winter. So the natural environment will not be favourable in Asia in about May."
I believe this is the main reason May is the deadline for containment.
[0] https://www.fwdeveryone.com/t/puzmZFQGRTiiquwLa6tT-g/confere...
There are very few cases right now in South America or Australia -- and so far I can't find any evidence of person-to-person transmission on either continent.
If the outbreak continues to fail to take hold there for even just a couple more weeks, then it seems likely that the northern-hemisphere outbreak will die down when the season ends.
Other coronaviruses and most human respiratory viruses generally exhibit very strong seasonality. It seems likely that this virus will too. But, again, watch the southern hemisphere.
Of course, the flu is seasonal -- and returns every year. Even if this does burn out in late spring, it may be back next year.
Wouldn't Singapore already have shown this by now? They've had to devote considerable effort towards management and it's basically summer year-round there and it's quite humid..
Winter also means people wear gloves, touch their face less, and don't sweat as much.
I read that it's an extreme outlier. It's mostly 3-6 days.
> COVID-19 has a 21+ day incubation period
Example of a 27-day incubation: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-health-incubation/i...