IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jijerp/v17y2020i15p5399-d390455.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Effects of Weather on Coronavirus Pandemic

Author

Listed:
  • Qasim Bukhari

    (McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, MA 02139, USA)

  • Joseph M. Massaro

    (Department of Biostatistics, Boston University School of Public Health, Boston, MA 02215, USA)

  • Ralph B. D’Agostino

    (Department of Mathematics and Statistics, Boston University, Boston, MA 02215, USA)

  • Sheraz Khan

    (McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, MA 02139, USA
    Department of Radiology, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA 02114, USA
    Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 149 13th Street, CNY-2275, Boston, MA 02129, USA)

Abstract

The novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) has spread globally and has been declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization. While influenza virus shows seasonality, it is unknown if COVID-19 has any weather-related affect. In this work, we analyze the patterns in local weather of all the regions affected by COVID-19 globally. Our results indicate that approximately 85% of the COVID-19 reported cases until 1 May 2020, making approximately 3 million reported cases (out of approximately 29 million tests performed) have occurred in regions with temperature between 3 and 17 °C and absolute humidity between 1 and 9 g/m 3 . Similarly, hot and humid regions outside these ranges have only reported around 15% or approximately 0.5 million cases (out of approximately 7 million tests performed). This suggests that weather might be playing a role in COVID-19 spread across the world. However, this role could be limited in US and European cities (above 45 N), as mean temperature and absolute humidity levels do not reach these ranges even during the peak summer months. For hot and humid countries, most of them have already been experiencing temperatures >35 °C and absolute humidity >9 g/m 3 since the beginning of March, and therefore the effect of weather, however little it is, has already been accounted for in the COVID-19 spread in those regions, and they must take strict social distancing measures to stop the further spread of COVID-19. Our analysis showed that the effect of weather may have only resulted in comparatively slower spread of COVID-19, but not halted it. We found that cases in warm and humid countries have consistently increased, accounting for approximately 500,000 cases in regions with absolute humidity >9 g/m 3 , therefore effective public health interventions must be implemented to stop the spread of COVID-19. This also means that ‘summer’ would not alone stop the spread of COVID-19 in any part of the world.

Suggested Citation

  • Qasim Bukhari & Joseph M. Massaro & Ralph B. D’Agostino & Sheraz Khan, 2020. "Effects of Weather on Coronavirus Pandemic," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 17(15), pages 1-12, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:17:y:2020:i:15:p:5399-:d:390455
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/17/15/5399/pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/17/15/5399/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Ridenhour, B. & Kowalik, J.M. & Shay, D.K., 2014. "Unraveling R0: Considerations for public health applications," American Journal of Public Health, American Public Health Association, vol. 104(2), pages 32-41.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Alekh Gour & Shikha Aggarwal & Subodha Kumar, 2022. "Lending ears to unheard voices: An empirical analysis of user‐generated content on social media," Production and Operations Management, Production and Operations Management Society, vol. 31(6), pages 2457-2476, June.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Mark C. Quigley & Januka Attanayake & Andrew King & Fabian Prideaux, 2020. "A multi-hazards earth science perspective on the COVID-19 pandemic: the potential for concurrent and cascading crises," Environment Systems and Decisions, Springer, vol. 40(2), pages 199-215, June.
    2. Christopher Avery & William Bossert & Adam Thomas Clark & Glenn Ellison & Sara Ellison, 2020. "Policy Implications of Models of the Spread of Coronavirus: Perspectives and Opportunities for Economists," CESifo Working Paper Series 8293, CESifo.
    3. Christopher Avery & William Bossert & Adam Clark & Glenn Ellison & Sara Fisher Ellison, 2020. "Policy Implications of Models of the Spread of Coronavirus: Perspectives and Opportunities for Economists," NBER Working Papers 27007, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    4. Jude Dzevela Kong & Edward W Tekwa & Sarah A Gignoux-Wolfsohn, 2021. "Social, economic, and environmental factors influencing the basic reproduction number of COVID-19 across countries," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 16(6), pages 1-17, June.
    5. Gilgur, Alexander & Ramirez-Marquez, Jose Emmanuel, 2022. "Modeling mobility, risk, and pandemic severity during the first year of COVID," Socio-Economic Planning Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 84(C).
    6. Na, Jiaming & Tibebu, Haileleol & De Silva, Varuna & Kondoz, Ahmet & Caine, Michael, 2020. "Probabilistic approximation of effective reproduction number of COVID-19 using daily death statistics," Chaos, Solitons & Fractals, Elsevier, vol. 140(C).

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:17:y:2020:i:15:p:5399-:d:390455. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.