Medical Express Respiratory viruses like COVID-19 and influenza surge in the colder months. And it’s not just because people are spending more time indoors. Dr. Matthew Binnicker, director of the Clinical Microbiology Molecular Lab and co-director of the Clinical Virology Lab at Mayo Clinic, explains what other factors promote virus spread in the winter.
“It’s a really interesting phenomenon that we see with respiratory viruses like COVID-19 and influenza, where we see almost annually this surge of infections during the cooler months in the Northern Hemisphere. It usually happens anywhere between November and the end of February,” says Dr. Binnicker. “Most people think that it’s just due to more people being indoors, which I think plays some role in it.”