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. 2023 Feb 24;7(3):e2022GH000705.
doi: 10.1029/2022GH000705. eCollection 2023 Mar.

Effects of High Temperature on COVID-19 Deaths in U.S. Counties

Bowen Chu  1 , Renjie Chen  2 , Qi Liu  1   3 , Haikun Wang  1   3   4
Affiliations

Effects of High Temperature on COVID-19 Deaths in U.S. Counties

Bowen Chu et al. Geohealth. .

Abstract

The United States of America (USA) was afflicted by extreme heat in the summer of 2021 and some states experienced a record-hot or top-10 hottest summer. Meanwhile, the United States was also one of the countries impacted most by the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. Growing numbers of studies have revealed that meteorological factors such as temperature may influence the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases and deaths. However, the associations between temperature and COVID-19 severity differ in various study areas and periods, especially in periods of high temperatures. Here we choose 119 US counties with large counts of COVID-19 deaths during the summer of 2021 to examine the relationship between COVID-19 deaths and temperature by applying a two-stage epidemiological analytical approach. We also calculate the years of life lost (YLL) owing to COVID-19 and the corresponding values attributable to high temperature exposure. The daily mean temperature is approximately positively correlated with COVID-19 deaths nationwide, with a relative risk of 1.108 (95% confidence interval: 1.046, 1.173) in the 90th percentile of the mean temperature distribution compared with the median temperature. In addition, 0.02 YLL per COVID-19 death attributable to high temperature are estimated at the national level, and distinct spatial variability from -0.10 to 0.08 years is observed in different states. Our results provide new evidence on the relationship between high temperature and COVID-19 deaths, which might help us to understand the underlying modulation of the COVID-19 pandemic by meteorological variables and to develop epidemic policy response strategies.

Keywords: COVID‐19; SARS‐CoV‐2; The United States; high temperature; mortality.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflicts of interest relevant to this study.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Overall cumulative temperature–mortality associations from multivariate meta‐analysis by country and region. The state groups are shown on the titles, and the vertical dashed lines represent the 90th percentiles of the temperature distribution.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Results of univariable regression between the mortality associated with COVID‐19 and other county‐specific characteristics. The formula used in the regression curves was the cubic spline of X‐axis variables. Note that the X‐axis variable is the logarithmic value of population density in panel (f).
Figure 3
Figure 3
Spatial distribution of years of life lost (YLL) per COVID‐19 death (a) and YLL per COVID‐19 death attributable to high temperatures (b) at state level in the USA. In panel (b), positive and negative values represent promoting and alleviating attribution of high temperature to YLL per COVID‐19 death, respectively.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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