Impact of climate change on SARS-CoV-2 epidemic in China

Abstract

The outbreak and prevalence of SARS-CoV-2 have severely affected social security. Physical isolation is an effective control that affects the short-term human-to-human transmission of the epidemic, although weather presents a long-term effect. Understanding the effect of weather on the outbreak allow it to be contained at the earliest possible. China is selected as the study area, and six weather factors that receive the most attention from January 20, 2020 to April 30, 2020 are selected to investigate the correlation between weather and SARS-CoV-2 to provide a theoretical basis for long-term epidemic prevention and control. The results show that (1) the average growth rate (GR) of SARS-CoV-2 in each province is logarithmically distributed with a mean value of 5.15%. The GR of the southeastern region is higher than that of the northwestern region, which is consistent with the Hu Line. (2) The specific humidity, 2-m temperature (T), ultraviolet (UV) radiation, and wind speed (WS) adversely affect the GR. By contrast, the total precipitation (TP) and surface pressure (SP) promote the GR. (3) For every 1 unit increase in UV radiation, the GR decreases by 0.30% in 11 days, and the UV radiation in China is higher than that worldwide (0.92% higher per day). Higher population aggregation and urbanization directly affect the epidemic, and weather is an indirect factor.

Discovering the E-Government and COVID-19 Effect on Sustainable Development: Novel Findings from the China Provinces

“…The effect is less substantial in the upper quantiles than in the median and lower quantiles. This indicates that the pandemic's negative impact is greater for regions with a median level of sustainability, in which less extreme weather events indirectly affect epidemic intensity than decreased biomedical waste [54]. In the upper quantile, lockdowns, characterized by restricted movement and workplace shutdowns, resulted in reduced transportation and lower use of natural resources like oil and coal rather than increased environmental quality.…”