Impact of temperature and relative humidity on the transmission of COVID-19: a modelling study in China and the United States.
BMJ Open
; 11(2): e043863, 2021 02 17.
Article
in English
| MEDLINE | ID: covidwho-1088259
ABSTRACT
OBJECTIVES:
We aim to assess the impact of temperature and relative humidity on the transmission of COVID-19 across communities after accounting for community-level factors such as demographics, socioeconomic status and human mobility status.DESIGN:
A retrospective cross-sectional regression analysis via the Fama-MacBeth procedure is adopted.SETTING:
We use the data for COVID-19 daily symptom-onset cases for 100 Chinese cities and COVID-19 daily confirmed cases for 1005 US counties.PARTICIPANTS:
A total of 69 498 cases in China and 740 843 cases in the USA are used for calculating the effective reproductive numbers. PRIMARY OUTCOMEMEASURES:
Regression analysis of the impact of temperature and relative humidity on the effective reproductive number (R value).RESULTS:
Statistically significant negative correlations are found between temperature/relative humidity and the effective reproductive number (R value) in both China and the USA.CONCLUSIONS:
Higher temperature and higher relative humidity potentially suppress the transmission of COVID-19. Specifically, an increase in temperature by 1°C is associated with a reduction in the R value of COVID-19 by 0.026 (95% CI (-0.0395 to -0.0125)) in China and by 0.020 (95% CI (-0.0311 to -0.0096)) in the USA; an increase in relative humidity by 1% is associated with a reduction in the R value by 0.0076 (95% CI (-0.0108 to -0.0045)) in China and by 0.0080 (95% CI (-0.0150 to -0.0010)) in the USA. Therefore, the potential impact of temperature/relative humidity on the effective reproductive number alone is not strong enough to stop the pandemic.Keywords
Full text:
Available
Collection:
International databases
Database:
MEDLINE
Main subject:
Temperature
/
COVID-19
/
Humidity
/
Models, Theoretical
Type of study:
Experimental Studies
/
Observational study
/
Prognostic study
/
Randomized controlled trials
Limits:
Humans
Country/Region as subject:
North America
/
Asia
Language:
English
Journal:
BMJ Open
Year:
2021
Document Type:
Article
Affiliation country:
Bmjopen-2020-043863
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