Transmission rate and control efficiency of COVID-19 was lower in warm and wet climate

Abstract

COVID-19 has caused huge damage to public health around the world, revealing the influencing factors are essential to take effective control. By using a global dataset covering 617 time series over the world, we estimated the transmission parameters and modeled human and climate effects on COVID-19 transmission. We found that the average transmission rate was lower in warm climate over the world and in wet climate (more precipitation) in Europe. The maximum transmission rate was lower in warm climate in the world, China and USA, and in wet climate in China. The control efficiency in the world, China, and USA was lower in warm and wet condition. In general, our results indicate that warm and wet climate do not favor transmission and human intervention of COVID-19, and COVID-19 transmission rate would be lower in warm and wet seasons or regions than in dry and cold ones.

Keywords: COVID-19; control efficiency; precipitation; temperature; transmission ability.