India did have an innate, natural shield against coronavirus, after all

India does have an innate shield against the coronavirus after all, if one goes by the latest theory that some experts have just expounded.At a time when fear is at a peak after the dreaded virus has claimed nearly 3,000 lives, India's relative safety lies in its weather which acts as a defence against the virus, says K K Aggarwal, president, Heart Care Foundation of India.That could be exactly the reason why Ebola, yellow fever, SARS and MERS — which took a high global toll over the past one decade — had negligible impact on India, Aggarwal told ToI. After ravaging countries that have more agreeable climatic conditions, viruses — no matter however deadly — lose their killer edge once they encounter India's high temperature and humidity that makes life difficult for them, he added.Aggarwal, also a former president of the Indian Medical Association, traces the origin and spread of the epidemic thus: Viruses prefer lower temperatures, which is why they have spread speedily in cooler and less humid southeast Asian areas like Japan and South Korea. But in India's case, even though the first patient (A Kerala student) was diagnosed quite a long while ago, there has still been no sign of an outbreak.It may be noted that two fresh cases were detected yesterday, taking India's tally of the infected to 5.Souren Panja, Head, Critical Care, RTIICS concurs with Aggarwal. The typical Indian weather is certainly a deterrent, he believes. According to him, "The geographical spread of nCoV suggests that it has so far been restricted to cooler climates."According to Arindam Biswas, and internal medicine consultant, three factors determine a virus' spread — the "agent or the virus itself, the host and the environment". While the virus and the host are present everywhere, India didn't give the virus an ideal weather condition, he thinks.The experts, however, also have a grim warning — they are not ruling out the possibility of a 'silent transmission' of coronavirus in India. Transmission of the diseases could be occurring in undetected ways, which may lead to a disaster at some point.While they all agree that Modi govt has done a fine job of containing the virus so far, they also fear that the typically high incidence of pneumonia in the country may be potentially masking the transmission of coronavirus, which could be dangerous when cases eventually break out.

from Economic Times https://ift.tt/2vBCyTs