Meteorological factors, governmental responses and COVID-19: Evidence from four European countries

Abstract

With the global lockdown, meteorological factors are highly discussed for COVID-19 transmission. In this study, national-specific and region-specific data sets from Germany, Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom were used to explore the effect of temperature, absolute humidity and diurnal temperature range (DTR) on COVID-19 transmission. From February 1 st to November 1 st , a 7-day COVID-19 case doubling time (Td), meteorological factors with cumulative 14-day-lagged, government response index and other factors were fitted in the distributed lag nonlinear models. The overall relative risk (RR) of the 10th and the 25th percentiles temperature compared to the median were 0.0074 (95% CI: 0.0023, 0.0237) and 0.1220 (95% CI: 0.0667, 0.2232), respectively. The pooled RR of lower (10th, 25th) and extremely high (90th) absolute humidity were 0.3266 (95% CI: 0.1379, 0.7734), 0.6018 (95% CI: 0.4693, 0.7718) and 0.3438 (95% CI: 0.2254, 0.5242), respectively. While the DTR did not have a significant effect on Td. The total cumulative effect of temperature (10th) and absolute humidity (10th, 90th) on Td increased with the change of lag days. Similarly, a decline in temperature and absolute humidity at cumulative 14-day-lagged corresponded to the lower RR on Td in pooled region-specific effects. In summary, the government responses are important factors in alleviating the spread of COVID-19. After controlling that, our results indicate that both the cold and the dry environment also likely facilitate the COVID-19 transmission.

Effects of climate variables on the transmission of COVID-19: a systematic review of 62 ecological studies

“…Additionally, Ladha et al added the number of COVID-19 tests into the linear regression (Ladha et al 2020 ). Fu et al entered the government response index and other factors into the distributed lag nonlinear models as independent variables (Fu et al 2021 ). However, only four studies identified potential confounding factors and conducted strategies to address the stated confounding factors, such as incorporations into the models and inclusions of dew point, cloud cover, precipitation, relative humidity, air pressure, or wind speed for the same period.…”

Does temperature matter for COVID-19 transmissibility? Evidence across Pakistani provinces

“…The COVID-19 virus is a member of the coronavirus family “severe acute respiratory syndrome” (SARS) and exhibits flu-like symptoms (Fu et al 2021 ). Given that weather (temperature) is an important variable in predicting flu, it is likely to be a crucial factor for the transmissibility of COVID-19 as well (Sajadi et al 2020 ).…”

Stochastic analysis of the relationship between atmospheric variables and coronavirus disease (COVID‐19) in a hot, arid climate

“…The results revealed that the lognormal distribution model had the best fit for the changes of COVID‐19 infected cases. Fu et al ( 2021 ) studied the influence of governmental responses and meteorological factors on COVID‐19 transmission in four European countries (UK, Italy, Germany, and Spain) using the distributed lag nonlinear model. Their results demonstrated that both the dry and cold environments are likely to facilitate COVID‐19 transmission.…”