Temperature significantly changes COVID-19 transmission in (sub)tropical cities of Brazil

Abstract

The novel coronavirus (COVID-19) has unleashed havoc across different countries and was declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization. Since certain evidences indicate a direct relationship of various viruses with the weather (temperature in particular), the same is being speculated about COVID-19; however, it is still under investigation as the pandemic is advancing the world over. In this study, we tried to analyze the spread of COVID-19 in the Indian sub-continent with respect to the local temperature regimes from 9 March, 2020, to 27 May, 2020. To establish the relation between COVID-19 and temperature in India, three different eco-geographical regions having signi cant temperature differences were taken into consideration for the analysis. We observed that except Maharashtra, Rajasthan and Kashmir showed a signi cantly positive correlation between the number of COVID-19 cases and the temperature during the period of study. The evidences based on the results presented in this research lead us to believe that the increasing temperature is bene cial to the COVID-19 spread, and the cases are going to rise further with the increasing temperature over India. We, therefore, conclude that the existing data, though limited, suggests that the spread of COVID-19 in India is not explained by the variation of temperature alone and is most likely driven by a host of other factors related to epidemiology, socioeconomics and other climatic factors. Based on the results, it is suggested that temperature should not be considered as a yardstick for planning intervention strategies for controlling the COVID-19 pandemic.

High temperature slows coronavirus disease 2019 transmission rate: A within and among country analysis

“…These data accord with earlier studies in this area demonstrated that ambient temperature dips increase the incidence of viral acute respiratory tract infections [3, 4 9, 10, 17]. Our ndings also broadly support current observations, which showed that temperatures had a negative linear relationship with the number of con rmed cases [8,9].…”

“…However, there has been a lively debate in the literature over whether higher temperatures modulate coronavirus infectivity and spreading. Recent evidence suggests that temperatures had a negative linear relationship with the number of con rmed COVID-19 cases [8][9][10]. Conversely, other studies do not support the hypothesis that high temperatures can reduce the transmission of COVID-19 [11].…”

Coronavirus Pandemic vs. Temperature in the context of Indian Subcontinent – A preliminary statistical analysis

“…It clearly shows that in Maharashtra, COVID-19 cases occurred irrespective of the temperature regime of the state. This nding is in tune with that of Prata et al, 2020 which suggested that the relationship between the average temperature and COVID-19 con rmed cases was approximately linear in the range of less than 25.8°C, which became at above 25.8 o C.…”

“…Contrary to Maharashtra, Rajasthan and Kashmir have shown that with increasing temperatures, COVID-19 cases have also increased in a statistically signi cant manner. This observation is again in contravention of the theory predicting the decrease in the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic with the increase in temperature up to a speci c limit (Prata et al, 2020;Chan et al, 2011). We observed that the increasing temperature within the given range observed during the period for Rajasthan and Kashmir sites might provide a bene cial environment for the coronavirus to grow and spread as evident by the increasing trend of the reported COVID-19 cases with the increasing temperature (Fig.…”

4P Model for Dynamic Prediction of Covid-19 with statistical and machine learning approach: Social Dynamics, Government Roles and Pathogen Behavior on Bangladesh Perspective

“…Health expenditure by the government was identified as a significant determinant of deaths caused from COVID-19 [45,46], whereas topographical locations along with their climatic circumstances were detected as prominent factors for the diffusion of the virus [47]. Although the temperature has been observed to be a relevant factor of COVID-19 transmission according to the results of some studies [48,49,50], there are some counterarguments as well [51,52]. Males, as well as older people, were observed to be exceedingly vulnerable to COVID-19 [53,54].…”