Global warming may increase the resistance of viruses

Symbol Viruses adapting to warm environments may become harder to eliminate by common disinfection strategies. (Photo: Andri Bryner) - Adaptation to warmer environmental conditions may increase the resistance of viruses, making them harder to be inactivated. This is the finding of a new study involving Eawag. Global warming could therefore make it more difficult to combat viruses. Enteroviruses, which can cause infections such as a cold or polio, and other pathogenic viruses enter wastewater via faeces and are ultimately released into surface waters. There they can be inactivated by heat, sunlight and other microbes, thereby losing their ability to spread disease. A team of researchers led by Tamar Kohn and Anna Carratalá from the EPFL, including Tim Julian from the Eawag water research institute, investigated how climate change could affect the resistance of viruses.