--- title: Wuhan Coronavirus, Climate Change, and Future Epidemics description: How rising global temperatures are weakening our bodies' immune systems, making them more susceptible to emerging viruses canonical: https://time.com/5779156/wuhan-coronavirus-climate-change/ author: Justin Worland article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2020-02-06T15:52:56.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-10-14T08:52:54.579Z article:section: Science og:title: Wuhan Coronavirus, Climate Change, and Future Epidemics og:description: How rising global temperatures are weakening our bodies' immune systems, making them more susceptible to emerging viruses og:url: https://time.com/5779156/wuhan-coronavirus-climate-change/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt616a5d2209514cf5/698a09e4929fadcde8bf5a9d/flying-bat.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 2121 og:image:height: 1193 og:image:alt: Anoura geoffroyi og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Wuhan Coronavirus, Climate Change, and Future Epidemics twitter:description: How rising global temperatures are weakening our bodies' immune systems, making them more susceptible to emerging viruses twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt616a5d2209514cf5/698a09e4929fadcde8bf5a9d/flying-bat.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # The Wuhan Coronavirus, Climate Change, and Future Epidemics > Sponsored content. 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Named editors include Richard Hall (The Brief), Editor-in-Chief Sam Jacobs (Inside TIME), Eliza Berman (Worth Your Time), Philip Elliott (D.C. Brief), Justin Worland (Future Proof) and Harry Booth (In the Loop). Health Matters is written by TIME's health desk. #### How do I sign up for a TIME newsletter? Go to time.com/newsletters, choose the newsletters you want and enter your email address. There is no cost and no subscription requirement. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-network-2026q3/newsletters?i=2336b3a1-4066-4fde-aea0-00ad57d8f6b2&cr=time-nl-network-2026q3-v1) ## Video: U.S. Citizens Document A Day In The Life On Lockdown In Wuhan [Watch (HLS stream): U.S. Citizens Document A Day In The Life On Lockdown In Wuhan](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/Rvrn1TZG.m3u8) (6:14)  _Published 2020-02-01. On early Wednesday morning, a U.S. plane evacuated around 240 Americans from Wuhan. Justin Steece and Priscilla Dickey were not on that plane with their families._  by [Justin Worland](https://time.com/author/justin-worland/)  ## Justin Worland Senior Correspondent Feb 6, 2020 3:52 PM UTC On early Wednesday morning, a U.S. plane evacuated around 240 Americans from Wuhan. Justin Steece and Priscilla Dickey were not on that plane with their families.  by [Justin Worland](https://time.com/author/justin-worland/)  ## Justin Worland Senior Correspondent Feb 6, 2020 3:52 PM UTC A previously unknown strain of coronavirus has dominated headlines in recent weeks, and alarmed public health officials with its rapid spread and virulent nature. But it’s really no surprise to the scientists who study infectious disease: it’s just one of several pathogens that have the potential to reach calamitous status. I have no evidence that climate change triggered this particular virus to jump from animals to humans at this particular time, or that a warmer planet has helped it spread. That said, it’s pretty clear that, broadly speaking, climate change is likely to lead to an uptick in future epidemics caused by viruses and other pathogens. Scientists have understood for decades that climate change would change the way diseases spread, but, as the planet warms, those hypotheses are being tested and scientists are learning in real time. There are many links between climate change and infectious diseases, but I’m going to focus on one particularly novel—and concerning—area of knowledge: how rising temperatures are making our natural immune systems less effective. _Sign up for our daily coronavirus newsletter by clicking_ [_on this link_](https://cloud.newsletters.time.com/coronavirus?source=article)_, and please send any tips, leads, and stories to_ [_virus@time.com_](mailto:virus@time.com)_._ Our bodies are amazing disease-fighting machines. One adaptation goes a long way: our warm body temperature can by itself shut down all sorts of unwanted invasions. When a pathogen enters our body, we often get a fever, warming us up even more to fight off disease. Fevers stimulate the immune system and, ideally, the heat creates an environment where it’s difficult for pathogens to survive. But, as pathogens are exposed to gradually warmer temperatures in the natural world, they become better equipped to survive the high temperature inside the human body. “Every time we have a very hot day, we have a selection event,” says Arturo Casadevall, a professor of microbiology and immunology at Johns Hopkins University’s Bloomberg School of Public Health. The pathogens that survive—and reproduce—are better adapted to higher temperatures, including those in our bodies. And, with that, one of our body’s primary defense mechanisms diminishes in effectiveness. This is not a theoretical, far-off concern. Last year, Casadevall and colleagues [documented](https://mbio.asm.org/content/10/4/e01397-19) in the journal _mBio_ how _Candida auris_ (a fungus that gets into the bloodstream, leading to a range of ailments) emerged simultaneously in patients in three different isolated places—southern Asia, Venezuela and South Africa—between 2012 and 2015\. In our globalized world, diseases are often transported by human carriers who hop on planes, but in this case the scientists concluded that similar changing climatic conditions in each of these places likely drove the simultaneous development. It’s hard to say how widespread this effect could be, Casadevall says, but there’s no reason to think that it would be limited to fungi like _Candida auris._ The strain of coronavirus that’s spreading now is different than _Candida_ for many reasons, but its likely animal vector—bats—provides an interesting example of how temperatures relate to the spread of infectious disease. Like humans, bats are mammals that maintain a warm body temperature that protect them from disease. But while our body temperature rests around 98.6°F and spikes a few degrees when we’re sick, bats’ body temperatures can regularly jump to as high as 105°F. That means they can carry a whole slew of pathogens without suffering from them. In the near future, as global temperatures inch up, bats will continue to be protected by their body heat, while the pathogens they carry are better able to harm us. For decades, scientists have recognized that climate change would lead to a range of public health consequences. A 1992 report from the National Academy of Sciences, for example, cited a number of ways climate change could lead to the spread of infectious disease and described the lack of resources devoted to studying the impact of climate change on disease as “disturbing.” Four years later, a [widely-cited paper](https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/394508) in the _Journal of the American Medical Association_ warned that climate change could increase the spread of everything from malnutrition to malaria, and called for concerted study between doctors, climate scientists and social scientists. That same year the World Health Organization published a 300-page tome on the topic, looking at a slew of ties between climate and health, but at the same time noting that the links are “complex and multifactorial.” We know more today than we did then, but there’s still a lot we don’t know. When Arctic permafrost melts, what pathogens that have been buried for millennia will be released into the atmosphere—and can we combat them? What will the loss of entire communities, countries and ways of life do to the human psyche? How far will disease-carrying mosquitoes currently isolated to the tropics roam as their range shifts? Scientists are scrambling to find answers to these questions and many other “known unknowns,” but many unknown unknowns undoubtedly remain—and, in some ways, that’s what I find most terrifying. --- _A version of this article was originally published in TIME’s climate newsletter, One.Five._ [_Click here to sign up_](https://cloud.newsletters.time.com/newsletters/?newsletter%5Fname=climate&source=onsite-newsletter) _to receive these stories early._ ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/5779156/wuhan-coronavirus-climate-change/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/5779156/wuhan-coronavirus-climate-change/"},"headline":"The Wuhan Coronavirus, Climate Change, and Future Epidemics","datePublished":"2020-02-06T15:52:56.000Z","dateModified":"2026-10-14T08:52:54.579Z","description":"How rising global temperatures are weakening our bodies' immune systems, making them more susceptible to emerging viruses","url":"https://time.com/5779156/wuhan-coronavirus-climate-change/","keywords":["COVID-19","climate change"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt616a5d2209514cf5/698a09e4929fadcde8bf5a9d/flying-bat.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Justin Worland","jobTitle":"Senior Correspondent","url":"https://time.com/author/justin-worland/"}],"articleSection":"Science","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt616a5d2209514cf5/698a09e4929fadcde8bf5a9d/flying-bat.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"Anoura geoffroyi","caption":"Anoura geoffroyi","creditText":"Nicolas Reusens—Getty Images","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/section/science/","name":"Science"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/tag/covid-19/","name":"COVID-19"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/5779156/wuhan-coronavirus-climate-change/","name":"The Wuhan Coronavirus, Climate Change, and Future Epidemics"}}]},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"VideoObject","name":"U.S. Citizens Document A Day In The Life On Lockdown In Wuhan","description":"On early Wednesday morning, a U.S. plane evacuated around 240 Americans from Wuhan. 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