COVID-19 transmission in Mainland China is associated with temperature and humidity: A time-series analysis

Abstract

Journal Pre-proof J o u r n a l P r e -p r o o f 2 Title: COVID-19 transmission in Mainland China is associated with temperature and humidity: a time-series analysis Abstract COVID-19 has become a pandemic. The influence of meteorological factors on the transmission and spread of COVID-19 is of interest. This study sought to examine the associations of daily average temperature (AT) and relative humidity (ARH) with the daily count of COVID-19 cases in 30 Chinese provinces (in Hubei fromGeneralized Additive Model (GAM) was fitted to quantify the province-specific associations between meteorological variables and the daily cases of COVID-19 during the study periods.In the model, the 14-day exponential moving averages (EMAs) of AT and ARH, and their interaction were included with time trend and health-seeking behavior adjusted. Their spatial distributions were visualized. AT and ARH showed significantly negative associations with COVID-19 with a significant interaction between them (0.04, 95% confidence interval: 0.004-0.07) in Hubei. Every 1°C increase in the AT led to a decrease in the daily confirmed cases by 36% to 57% when ARH was in the range from 67% to 85.5%. Every 1% increase in ARH led to a decrease in the daily confirmed cases by 11% to 22% when AT was in the range from 5.04°C to 8.2°C. However, these associations were not consistent throughout MainlandChina.

Weather Conditions and COVID-19 Transmission: Estimates and Projections

“…Yet, there is limited agreement on the shape and magnitude of those relationships. While studies find correlations between pandemic severity and variations in temperature (9,(15)(16)(17)(18)(19)(20)(21)(22), relative and absolute humidity (9,(16)(17)(18)(19)(20)(21)(22)(23)(24), ultraviolet light (19), wind speed (18,21), visibility, and precipitation (17), others (19,(25)(26)(27) indicate weaker, inconsistent, or no relationships. A recent review finds inconclusive evidence for the role of weather in COVID-19 transmission (1) and others caution against interpreting weather as a key driver due to this uncertainty (28).…”

Effect of Temperature on the Transmission of COVID-19: A Machine Learning Case Study in Spain

“…The average incubation period is 5-6 days with the longest incubation period of 14 days [6,7,8,9,10]. In addition to person-to-person transmission of COVID-19 through direct contact or droplets [11], studies have shown that geographical, and climatic factors are important factors in the transmission and survival of coronaviruses [12,2,13,14,15,16,17] . For example, temperature could increase or decrease the transmission risk by affecting the survival time of coronaviruses on surfaces [18,19,20,21,22].…”

Spatial Relationships between COVID-19 infection rates and Air Pollution, Geo-Meteorological and Social Parameters in Dhaka, Bangladesh

“…in Relative Humiditywas associated with reduced mortality rate by 3.08% and 0.85% reduction of daily new cases of COVID-19 infection. In this study a 1°C increase in temperature leads to a 10% increase in COVID-19 infection rates (Qi et al 2020;Wu et al 2020b…”

“…There have also been studies relating to COVID-19 infection rates and geo-meteorological parameters. Temperature, humidity, and rainfall may have a direct in uence to spread the COVID-19 and other infectious vector-borne diseases (Casanova et al 2010;Qi et al 2020). (Xie and Zhu 2020) conducted a study in 122 cities across China to establish epidemiological and experimental research on ambient temperature and COVID-19 infection.…”

“…(Xie and Zhu 2020) found a negative linear relationship between the COVID-19 con rmed cases and mean temperature in 122 cities in mainland China, suggesting warmer weather will not be a crucial factor to reduce the infection case of COVID-19. On the contrary, higher mean temperature and average relative humidity are quite signi cant in enhancing the COVID-19 contamination rate in Brazil (Auler et al 2020) although average temperature and relative humidity were not consistent in terms of geographical areas, because of spatial heterogeneity problems (Qi et al 2020). (Bashir et al 2020) found a positive relationship between the COVID-19 and average temperature, minimum temperature, and air quality in New York, USA.…”