Influence of Meteorological Factors on the COVID-19 Transmission with Season and Geographic Location

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to investigate whether the relationship between meteorological factors (i.e., daily maximum temperature, minimum temperature, average temperature, temperature range, relative humidity, average wind speed and total precipitation) and COVID-19 transmission is affected by season and geographical location during the period of community-based pandemic prevention and control. COVID-19 infected case records and meteorological data in four cities (Wuhan, Beijing, Urumqi and Dalian) in China were collected. Then, the best-fitting model of COVID-19 infected cases was selected from four statistic models (Gaussian, logistic, lognormal distribution and allometric models), and the relationship between meteorological factors and COVID-19 infected cases was analyzed using multiple stepwise regression and Pearson correlation. The results showed that the lognormal distribution model was well adapted to describing the change of COVID-19 infected cases compared with other models (R² > 0.78; p-values < 0.001). Under the condition of implementing community-based pandemic prevention and control, relationship between COVID-19 infected cases and meteorological factors differed among the four cities. Temperature and relative humidity were mainly the driving factors on COVID-19 transmission, but their relations obviously varied with season and geographical location. In summer, the increase in relative humidity and the decrease in maximum temperature facilitate COVID-19 transmission in arid inland cities, while at this point the decrease in relative humidity is good for the spread of COVID-19 in coastal cities. For the humid cities, the reduction of relative humidity and the lowest temperature in the winter promote COVID-19 transmission.

Keywords: community-based pandemic prevention and control; geographical location; precipitation; relative humidity; season; temperature; wind speed.

Figure 1

Changes in COVID-19 infected cases and meteorological factors during the period of community-based epidemic prevention and control in four cities. T_max, T_min, DTR, T_m, RH, MWS and TP represent daily maximum temperature, minimum temperature, temperature range, average daily temperature, air relative humidity, average wind speed and precipitation, respectively. IC refers to COVID-19 infected cases.

Figure 2

The fitting curve of COVID-19 infected cases using the lognormal distribution model in four Chinese cities (A–D).