Influence of Meteorological Factors on the COVID-19 Transmission with Season and Geographic Location

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to investigate whether the relationship between meteorological factors (i.e., daily maximum temperature, minimum temperature, average temperature, temperature range, relative humidity, average wind speed and total precipitation) and COVID-19 transmission is affected by season and geographical location during the period of community-based pandemic prevention and control. COVID-19 infected case records and meteorological data in four cities (Wuhan, Beijing, Urumqi and Dalian) in China were collected. Then, the best-fitting model of COVID-19 infected cases was selected from four statistic models (Gaussian, logistic, lognormal distribution and allometric models), and the relationship between meteorological factors and COVID-19 infected cases was analyzed using multiple stepwise regression and Pearson correlation. The results showed that the lognormal distribution model was well adapted to describing the change of COVID-19 infected cases compared with other models (R2 > 0.78; p-values < 0.001). Under the condition of implementing community-based pandemic prevention and control, relationship between COVID-19 infected cases and meteorological factors differed among the four cities. Temperature and relative humidity were mainly the driving factors on COVID-19 transmission, but their relations obviously varied with season and geographical location. In summer, the increase in relative humidity and the decrease in maximum temperature facilitate COVID-19 transmission in arid inland cities, while at this point the decrease in relative humidity is good for the spread of COVID-19 in coastal cities. For the humid cities, the reduction of relative humidity and the lowest temperature in the winter promote COVID-19 transmission.

Distinct weather conditions and human mobility impacts on the SARS-CoV-2 outbreak in Colombia: Application of an artificial neural network approach

“…Our findings revealed distinct effects of temperature (T avg , T max and T min ) and humidity (AH and RH) variables on the COVID-19 spread in the assessed cities. It corroborates the adaptability of this new coronavirus to different environmental conditions ( Bhardwaj and Agrawal, 2020 ; Yang et al, 2021 ). In MED and CAL, when T min was lower (<18 °C and <17 °C, respectively) the number of contagions increased in quarantine ( Figs.…”

Impacts of socio-economic determinants, spatial distance and climate factors on the confirmed cases and deaths of COVID-19 in China

“…In this study, we selected the relative air humidity, temperature and solar radiation intensity as representing climate factors. This is because these parameters has been reported as the most influencing meteorological factors on COVID-19 transmission in previous studies [3,24,26,29].…”

“…In addition, as suggested from Zhu et al [17], Wu et al [18] and Heibati et al [28], urban climate factors and pollution status also affected the spread of novel coronavirus. The increases of contaminant concentration and air humidity in cold season both are beneficial to the spread of novel coronavirus [29]. Under the same geographical conditions, such as the location from the ocean and altitude, the pollutant concentration and air humidity in larger-sized cities are significantly higher than those in small-and medium-sized cities due to the influences of urban "Heat Island Effect" and "Turbidity Island Effect" [17,18,47].…”

“…For example, coronavirus is discovered to survive longer, and is more likely to spread in cooler cities [3,27]. Influences of temperature, relative humidity, and precipitation on COVID-19 transmission all differ between coastal cities and inland cities [28,29]. Spatial distance to the outbreak area of the virus also affects variations on the confirmed cases and deaths of COVID-19 among cities [30,31].…”

“…At present, however, most studies on the impacts of socio-economic determinants, climate factors and spatial distance on the confirmed cases and deaths of COVID-19 only investigated a single type of factors [15,16,19,22,29]. For example, Luo et al reported that weather was related to the spread of COVID-19 in China [34].…”