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. 2020 Oct 20:740:140112.
doi: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2020.140112. Epub 2020 Jun 12.

Association of COVID-19 pandemic with meteorological parameters over Singapore

Shantanu Kumar Pani  1 , Neng-Huei Lin  2 , Saginela RavindraBabu  3
Affiliations

Association of COVID-19 pandemic with meteorological parameters over Singapore

Shantanu Kumar Pani et al. Sci Total Environ. .

Abstract

Meteorological parameters are the critical factors affecting the transmission of infectious diseases such as Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS), Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), and influenza. Consequently, infectious disease incidence rates are likely to be influenced by the weather change. This study investigates the role of Singapore's hot tropical weather in COVID-19 transmission by exploring the association between meteorological parameters and the COVID-19 pandemic cases in Singapore. This study uses the secondary data of COVID-19 daily cases from the webpage of Ministry of Health (MOH), Singapore. Spearman and Kendall rank correlation tests were used to investigate the correlation between COVID-19 and meteorological parameters. Temperature, dew point, relative humidity, absolute humidity, and water vapor showed positive significant correlation with COVID-19 pandemic. These results will help the epidemiologists to understand the behavior of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) virus against meteorological variables. This study finding would be also a useful supplement to help the local healthcare policymakers, Center for Disease Control (CDC), and the World Health Organization (WHO) in the process of strategy making to combat COVID-19 in Singapore.

Keywords: COVID-19; Correlation; Meteorology; SARS-CoV-2; Southeast Asia.

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Conflict of interest statement

Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that there is no conflict of interest regarding financial funding and the publication of this paper.

Figures

Unlabelled Image
Graphical abstract
Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Geographical locations and cumulative confirmed COVID-19 cases of Southeast Asian countries as of May 31, 2020 (the map is adopted from Center for Strategic and International Studies, 2020).
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
Information about COVID-19 (total confirmed cumulative cases, deaths, and recovered) in Southeast Asia as of May 31, 2020.
Fig. 3
Fig. 3
(a, b) Cases of COVID-19 in Singapore. Day-to-day variations in (c) T and DP (°C), (d) RH (%), (e) AH (g m−3) and WV (g kg−1), and (f) WS (m s−1) and ABLH (m) over Singapore from January 23 to May 31, 2020.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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