What do we know about the Covid-19 virus five years on? Seasonality

Shidonna Raven
2 hours ago
2 min read

By Rachel Hall

August 7, 2025

Photo / Image Source: Unsplash,

Is it a seasonal illness?

Experts assumed that as Covid became endemic, it would change into a winter bug, like the common cold or flu. UKHSA stats show this is not the case. “It is absolutely true that you are as likely to get Covid in summer as in winter,” said Danny Altmann, an immunologist at Imperial College London.

He added: “It’s been a shifting discussion – when do we calm down and say it’s become an endemic coronavirus like the common cold. I think we’re still so far off that place. There’s a kind of optimism that it’s just a winter sniffle, but it’s not a sniffle; it’s quite symptomatic, especially in vulnerable people and in the excess death figures, and also it is absolutely not seasonal.”

Altmann said that, although there is a perception that, as a coronavirus, Covid-19 is akin to a common cold, in reality it is closer to the flu in terms of the death rate, its impact on the NHS and the potential severity of symptoms.

Simon Williams, a sociologist at Swansea University who has researched public views on the pandemic, said: “We’re getting to the point where there’s a legitimate question about whether it will ever be [a winter virus]. It’s not a typical respiratory virus in terms of seasonality.”

Adam Kucharski, a professor at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, said that because Covid-19 evolves quickly – twice as fast as the fastest flu – it is less constrained by season. “Whereas a small change in transmissibility conditions is enough to stop flu in summer, Sars-CoV-2 can basically evolve its way over this barrier,” he said.

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