Will environmental changes in temperature affect the course of COVID-19?

• Main Authors: Carlos Del Rio, Adrián Camacho-Ortiz
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Elsevier 2020-05-01
• Series: Brazilian Journal of Infectious Diseases
• Subjects: Coronavirus; COVID-19; Temperature
• Online Access: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1413867020300349

While the outbreak has reached every region of the world, it is undeniable that countries in the southern hemisphere seem to be less affected, where cases have been reported, these have been imported and travel related. We analyzed the climate temperature from various regions according to their current ongoing human-to-human transmission status. We studied 3 groups; Group 1, 10 provinces from China with majority of COVID-19 cases; Group 2, areas where continuous horizontal transmission outside of China had been reported; and group 3, areas where imported cases had been detected and no horizontal transmission had been documented after at least seven days since the first case was reported. The regions without ongoing human-to-human transmission showed significantly higher temperatures when compared to China and countries with ongoing human-to-human transmission, with over an 11-degree difference. The average rainfall during the study period was significantly higher in those regions without OHHT when compared to the Chinese provinces with ongoing human-to-human transmission and the regions with active transmission of SARS-CoV-2. Our findings show statistically significant differences between regions with ongoing human-to-human transmission of COVID-19 cases compared to those regions without horizontal transmission. This phenomenon could have implications in the behavior of the ongoing COVID-19 outbreak in the following months.