Does weath­er affect the spread of the coro­n­avirus outside?

Not real­ly.

The World Health Orga­ni­za­tion says the virus can be trans­mit­ted in any kind of weath­er and that there is no rea­son to believe that cold weath­er can kill it.

The U.N. health agency says the virus is main­ly spread between peo­ple. Rain and snow might dilute any traces of the virus on bench­es or oth­er out­side objects, but trans­mis­sion from sur­faces is not believed to be a major con­trib­u­tor to the pandemic.

Sci­en­tists say the real con­cern about cold weath­er is that low­er tem­per­a­tures are more like­ly to keep peo­ple indoors — poten­tial­ly in more crowd­ed spaces where the virus can spread more easily.

Stud­ies have shown that a sig­nif­i­cant per­cent­age of spread hap­pens with­in house­holds when peo­ple are shar­ing com­mon areas like kitchens and bathrooms.

WHO and oth­ers have also warned that in indoor spaces with poor ven­ti­la­tion, trans­mis­sion hap­pens more eas­i­ly because the virus can be spread in the air and infec­tious par­ti­cles might remain sus­pend­ed in the air for sev­er­al hours.

Super­spread­er events have been traced to night­clubs, gyms and even choir prac­tices. The coro­n­avirus does not trans­mit as often out­doors because fresh air dis­pers­es the virus par­ti­cles and peo­ple are more eas­i­ly able to keep their dis­tance from oth­ers. But experts cau­tion that if peo­ple spend extend­ed peri­ods of time out­doors close to oth­ers with­out wear­ing masks, coro­n­avirus spread is still possible.

Health offi­cials say the best way to stop trans­mis­sion of the virus is to wear a mask in pub­lic, stay at least 6 feet (2 meters) away from peo­ple not in your house­hold and fre­quent­ly wash your hands.

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