The association of COVID-19 incidence with temperature, humidity, and UV radiation - A global multi-city analysis.

Nottmeyer, Luise; Armstrong, Ben; Lowe, Rachel; Abbott, Sam; Meakin, Sophie; O'Reilly, Kathleen; von Borries, Rosa; Schneider, Rochelle; Royé, Dominic; Hashizume, Masahiro; Pascal, Mathilde; Tobias, Aurelio; Vicedo-Cabrera, Ana Maria; Lavigne, Eric; Correa, Patricia Matus; Ortega, Nicolás Valdés; Kynčl, Jan; Urban, Aleš; Orru, Hans; Ryti, Niilo; ... (2023). The association of COVID-19 incidence with temperature, humidity, and UV radiation - A global multi-city analysis. Science of the total environment, 854, p. 158636. Elsevier 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2022.158636

[img]
Preview
Text
1-s2.0-S0048969722057357-main.pdf - Accepted Version
Available under License Creative Commons: Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works (CC-BY-NC-ND).

Download (1MB) | Preview
[img] Text
Nottmeyer_SciTotalEnviron_2023.pdf - Published Version
Restricted to registered users only
Available under License Publisher holds Copyright.

Download (4MB)

BACKGROUND AND AIM

The associations between COVID-19 transmission and meteorological factors are scientifically debated. Several studies have been conducted worldwide, with inconsistent findings. However, often these studies had methodological issues, e.g., did not exclude important confounding factors, or had limited geographic or temporal resolution. Our aim was to quantify associations between temporal variations in COVID-19 incidence and meteorological variables globally.

METHODS

We analysed data from 455 cities across 20 countries from 3 February to 31 October 2020. We used a time-series analysis that assumes a quasi-Poisson distribution of the cases and incorporates distributed lag non-linear modelling for the exposure associations at the city-level while considering effects of autocorrelation, long-term trends, and day of the week. The confounding by governmental measures was accounted for by incorporating the Oxford Governmental Stringency Index. The effects of daily mean air temperature, relative and absolute humidity, and UV radiation were estimated by applying a meta-regression of local estimates with multi-level random effects for location, country, and climatic zone.

RESULTS

We found that air temperature and absolute humidity influenced the spread of COVID-19 over a lag period of 15 days. Pooling the estimates globally showed that overall low temperatures (7.5 °C compared to 17.0 °C) and low absolute humidity (6.0 g/m3 compared to 11.0 g/m3) were associated with higher COVID-19 incidence (RR temp =1.33 with 95%CI: 1.08; 1.64 and RR AH =1.33 with 95%CI: 1.12; 1.57). RH revealed no significant trend and for UV some evidence of a positive association was found. These results were robust to sensitivity analysis. However, the study results also emphasise the heterogeneity of these associations in different countries.

CONCLUSION

Globally, our results suggest that comparatively low temperatures and low absolute humidity were associated with increased risks of COVID-19 incidence. However, this study underlines regional heterogeneity of weather-related effects on COVID-19 transmission.

Item Type:

Journal Article (Original Article)

Division/Institute:

04 Faculty of Medicine > Pre-clinic Human Medicine > Institute of Social and Preventive Medicine (ISPM)

UniBE Contributor:

Vicedo Cabrera, Ana Maria

Subjects:

600 Technology > 610 Medicine & health
300 Social sciences, sociology & anthropology > 360 Social problems & social services

ISSN:

0048-9697

Publisher:

Elsevier

Language:

English

Submitter:

Pubmed Import

Date Deposited:

12 Sep 2022 15:33

Last Modified:

08 Sep 2024 00:25

Publisher DOI:

10.1016/j.scitotenv.2022.158636

PubMed ID:

36087670

Uncontrolled Keywords:

COVID-19 Distributed lag non-linear modelling Global analysis Humidity Temperature UV radiation

BORIS DOI:

10.48350/172840

URI:

https://boris.unibe.ch/id/eprint/172840

Actions (login required)

Edit item Edit item
Provide Feedback