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The Impact of Temperature on the Risk of COVID-19: A Multinational Study

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  • Hsiao-Yu Yang

    (Institute of Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences, College of Public Health, National Taiwan University, Taipei 10055, Taiwan
    Department of Public Health, College of Public Health, National Taiwan University, Taipei 10055, Taiwan
    Department of Environmental and Occupational Medicine, National Taiwan University Hospital, Taipei 100225, Taiwan)

  • Jason Kai Wei Lee

    (Human Potential Translational Research Programme, Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, National University of Singapore, Singapore S117597, Singapore
    Department of Physiology, Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, National University of Singapore, Singapore S117593, Singapore
    Global Asia Institute, National University of Singapore, Singapore S119076, Singapore
    N.1 Institute for Health, National University of Singapore, Singapore S117456, Singapore)

Abstract

The current understanding of ambient temperature and its link to the outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) is unclear. The objective of this study was to explore the environmental and climatic risk factors for SARS-CoV-2. For this study, we analyzed the data at the beginning of the outbreak (from 20 January to 31 March 2020) to avoid the influence of preventive or control measures. We obtained the number of cases and deaths due to SARS-CoV-2, international tourism, population age, universal health coverage, regional factors, the SARS-CoV-2 testing rate, and population density of a country. A total of 154 countries were included in this study. There were high incidence rates and mortality risks in the countries that had an average ambient temperature between 0 and 10 °C. The adjusted incidence rate for temperatures between 0 and 10 °C was 2.91 (95% CI 2.87–2.95). We randomly divided the data into a training set (80% of data) for model derivation and a test set (20% of data) for validation. Using a random forest statistical model, the model had high accuracy for predicting the high epidemic status of a country (ROC = 95.5%, 95% CI 87.9–100.0%) in the test set. Population age, temperature, and international tourism were the most important factors affecting the risk of SARS-CoV-2 in a country. An understanding the determinants of the SARS-CoV-2 outbreak can help to design better strategies for disease control. This study highlights the need to consider thermal effect in the prevention of emerging infectious diseases.

Suggested Citation

  • Hsiao-Yu Yang & Jason Kai Wei Lee, 2021. "The Impact of Temperature on the Risk of COVID-19: A Multinational Study," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 18(8), pages 1-10, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:18:y:2021:i:8:p:4052-:d:534549
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    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Michael Reid & Glenna Roberts & Eric Goosby & Paul Wesson, 2019. "Monitoring Universal Health Coverage (UHC) in high Tuberculosis burden countries: Tuberculosis mortality an important tracer of UHC service coverage," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 14(10), pages 1-10, October.
    2. Changyu Fan & Linping Liu & Wei Guo & Anuo Yang & Chenchen Ye & Maitixirepu Jilili & Meina Ren & Peng Xu & Hexing Long & Yufan Wang, 2020. "Prediction of Epidemic Spread of the 2019 Novel Coronavirus Driven by Spring Festival Transportation in China: A Population-Based Study," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 17(5), pages 1-27, March.
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