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. 2020 Jul 1:724:138226.
doi: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2020.138226. Epub 2020 Mar 26.

Effects of temperature variation and humidity on the death of COVID-19 in Wuhan, China

Yueling Ma  1 , Yadong Zhao  2 , Jiangtao Liu  1 , Xiaotao He  1 , Bo Wang  1 , Shihua Fu  1 , Jun Yan  3 , Jingping Niu  1 , Ji Zhou  4 , Bin Luo  5
Affiliations

Effects of temperature variation and humidity on the death of COVID-19 in Wuhan, China

Yueling Ma et al. Sci Total Environ. .

Abstract

Meteorological parameters are the important factors influencing the infectious diseases such as severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and influenza. This study aims to explore the association between Corona Virus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) deaths and weather parameters. In this study, we collected the daily death numbers of COVID-19, meteorological parameters and air pollutant data from 20 January 2020 to 29 February 2020 in Wuhan, China. Generalized additive model was applied to explore the effect of temperature, humidity and diurnal temperature range on the daily death counts of COVID-19. There were 2299 COVID-19 death counts in Wuhan during the study period. A positive association with COVID-19 daily death counts was observed for diurnal temperature range (r = 0.44), but negative association for relative humidity (r = -0.32). In addition, one unit increase in diurnal temperature range was only associated with a 2.92% (95% CI: 0.61%, 5.28%) increase in COVID-19 deaths in lag 3. However, both 1 unit increase of temperature and absolute humidity were related to the decreased COVID-19 death in lag 3 and lag 5, with the greatest decrease both in lag 3 [-7.50% (95% CI: -10.99%, -3.88%) and -11.41% (95% CI: -19.68%, -2.29%)]. In summary, this study suggests the temperature variation and humidity may also be important factors affecting the COVID-19 mortality.

Keywords: COVID-19; Diurnal temperature range; Generalized additive model; Humidity; Temperature.

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Conflict of interest statement

Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Figures

Unlabelled Image
Graphical abstract
Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Temporal pattern of COVID-19 daily mortality and meteorological factor levels in Wuhan, China, from 20 January to 29 February 2020. COVID-19, Corona Virus Disease 2019; Tem, temperature; DTR, diurnal temperature range; RH, relative humidity; AH, absolute humidity.
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
The exposure-response curves of meteorological factors and COVID-19 daily mortality counts in Wuhan, China, from 20 January to 29 February 2020. The X-axis is the concurrent day meteorological data, Y-axis is the predicted log relative risk (RR), is shown by the solid line, and the dotted lines represent the 95% confidence interval (CI). COVID-19, Corona Virus Disease 2019; DTR, diurnal temperature range.
Fig. 3
Fig. 3
Percentage change (95% confidence interval) of COVID-19 daily mortality with per 1 unit increase in meteorological factors for different lag days in the models in Wuhan, China, from 20 January to 29 February 2020. COVID-19, Corona Virus Disease 2019; DTR, diurnal temperature range.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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