Ambient Temperature and Subsequent COVID-19 Mortality in the OECD Countries and Individual United States

Abstract

Epidemiological studies have yielded conflicting results regarding climate and incident SARS-CoV-2 infection, and seasonality of infection rates is debated. Moreover, few studies have focused on COVD-19 deaths. We studied the association of average ambient temperature with subsequent COVID-19 mortality in the OECD countries and the individual United States (US), while accounting for other important meteorological and non-meteorological co-variates. The exposure of interest was average temperature and other weather conditions, measured at 25 days prior and 25 days after the first reported COVID-19 death was collected in the OECD countries and US states. The outcome of interest was cumulative COVID-19 mortality, assessed for each region at 25, 30, 35, and 40 days after the first reported death. Analyses were performed with negative binomial regression and adjusted for other weather conditions, particulate matter, sociodemographic factors, smoking, obesity, ICU beds, and social distancing. A 1 °C increase in ambient temperature was associated with 6% lower COVID-19 mortality at 30 days following the first reported death (multivariate-adjusted mortality rate ratio: 0.94, 95% CI 0.90, 0.99, p = 0.016). The results were robust for COVID-19 mortality at 25, 35 and 40 days after the first death, as well as other sensitivity analyses. The results provide consistent evidence across various models of an inverse association between higher average temperatures and subsequent COVID-19 mortality rates after accounting for other meteorological variables and predictors of SARS-CoV-2 infection or death. This suggests potentially decreased viral transmission in warmer regions and during the summer season.The global pandemic of Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), which is caused by Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2), was first identified in Wuhan, China in December 2019. Since then, it has affected over 213 countries and territories around the world, has resulted in more than 300,000 deaths globally (data accessed on May 15) 1 and continues to spread.Evidence suggests that respiratory viruses spread by both person-to person transmission and after hand contact with contaminated surfaces followed by facial self-contamination. Many different factors (the viral agent,

The effects of air pollution, meteorological parameters, and climate change on COVID-19 comorbidity and health disparities: A systematic review

“…A wide array of meteorological factors including particulate matter, air pollution, and heat were identified as positively associated with the spread of COVID-19. Studies identified that reported on the relationship between meteorological parameters and COVID-19 spread in different regions of the world [ [21] , [22] , [23] , [24] , [25] , [26] , [27] , [28] , [29] , [30] , [31] , [32] , [33] , [34] , [35] , [36] , [37] , [38] , [39] , [40] , [41] , [42] , [43] , [44] , [45] , [46] , [47] , [48] , [49] , [50] , [51] , [52] , [53] , [54] , [55] , [56] , [57] , [58] , [59] , [60] , [61] , [62] , [63] , [64] , [65] , [66] , [67] , [68] , [69] , [70] , [71] , [72] , [73] , [74] , [75] , [76] , [77] , [78] , [79] ] are shown in Table 1 . The interplay among meteorological factors (air pollution, meteorological parameters, and climate change) ...…”

“… Higher average temperatures an showed an inverse association with COVID-19 mortality rates. [ 78 ] Fifty (50) most polluted capital cities of the world PM 2.5 levels Data from the World Air Quality Index, an online platform was used pertaining to PM 2.5 levels in each capital before- and during quarantine. Population and weather data were obtained from respective countries.…”

Impact of COVID-19 pandemic crisis in Italy: comparison of 2020 with non-pharmaceutical measures and 2021 with pervasive vaccination programs

“…Studies report that the transmission of COVID-19 can be in uenced by the variation of environmental factors associated with seasonality (Christophi et al, 2021;Maharaj et al, 2021). In fact, summer seasonality can reduce the spread of the airborne disease of novel coronavirus over time and space and constrain the negative effects in society in the presence of speci c conditions of the total environment; in particular, while a higher absolute humidity can support viral transmission (Islam et al, 2021), high solar radiation and high wind speed can mitigate the spread of COVID-19 in society (Coccia, 2021(Coccia, , 2021aRosario et al, 2020).…”

Recurring Spatiotemporal Patterns of COVID-19 in the United States

“…Environmental factors and human behaviors that repeat around the same time every year might influence COVID-19 seasonality like other respiratory viruses (3,7,8). COVID-19's viral survival, and transmission rate might be affected by temperature and humidity (9)(10)(11)(12)(13). An association between COVID-19 and relative or absolute humidity has also been described (11).…”