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At the start of the coronavirus pandemic, there were high hopes that high summer temperatures could slow its spread. Although summer did not bring widespread relief, the connection between the weather and COVID-19 is still a hot topic.
The link between weather and COVID-19 is complicated. Climate influences the environment in which the coronavirus must survive before infecting a new host. But it also influences human behavior, which moves the virus from one host to another.
Research led by the University of Texas at Austin is adding some clarity on the role of weather in COVID-19 infection, and a new study found that temperature and humidity do not play a significant role in the spread of the coronavirus.
That means that whether it is hot or cold outside, transmission of COVID-19 from one person to another is almost entirely dependent on human behavior.
“The effect of climate is low and other characteristics such as mobility have more of an impact than climate,” said Dev Niyogi, a professor at UT Austin’s Cockrell School of Geosciences and Engineering who led the research. “In terms of relative importance, climate is one of the last parameters.”
The research was published on October 26, 2020 in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health.
Co-authors are Sajad Jamshidi, a research assistant at Purdue University, and Maryam Baniasad, a doctoral candidate at Ohio State University.
A study led by Professor Dev Niyogi of UT Austin found that temperature and humidity do not play a major role in the spread of the coronavirus. Credit: Ian Dolphin
The study defined climate as “equivalent air temperature,” which combines temperature and humidity into a single value. The scientists then looked at how this value spread with the coronavirus in different areas from March to July 2020, on a scale ranging from US states and counties to countries, regions, and the world at large.
At the county and state level, the researchers also investigated the relationship between coronavirus infection and human behavior, using cell phone data to study travel habits.
The study examined human behavior in a general sense and did not attempt to connect it with how the weather may have influenced it. At each scale, the researchers adjusted their analyzes so that population differences did not skew the results.
On all scales, the scientists found that the weather had almost no influence. When compared to other factors using a statistical metric that breaks down the relative contribution of each factor toward a particular outcome, the relative importance of climate on the county scale was less than 3%, with no indication that a specific type of climate promoted the propagation. About another.
On the contrary, the data showed the clear influence of human behavior and the enormous influence of individual behaviors. Traveling and spending time away from home were the two main factors contributing to the growth of COVID-19, with a relative importance of around 34% and 26% respectively. The next two important factors were population and urban density, with a relative importance of around 23% and 13% respectively.
“We shouldn’t think of the problem as something driven by time and climate,” Jamshidi said. “We must take personal precautions, be aware of urban exposure factors.”
Baniasad, a biochemist and pharmacist, said that assumptions about how the coronavirus would respond to the weather are largely based on studies conducted in laboratory settings on related viruses. He said this study illustrates the importance of studies looking at how coronavirus spreads through human communities.
“When you study something in the lab, it is a supervised environment. It’s difficult to scale society, ”he said. “This was our first motivation to do a larger study.”
Marshall Shepherd, a professor of atmospheric sciences at the University of Georgia who was not part of the study, said the research offers important insights into the climate and coronavirus at all scales.
“This important work clears up some of the hints about the connections between time and COVID-19 and highlights the need to address scientific challenges at the appropriate scales,” Shepherd said.
Niyogi said that one of the key lessons from the coronavirus pandemic is the importance of analyzing phenomena on a “human scale,” the scale on which humans live their daily lives. He said this research is an example of this kind of perspective.
“COVID, it is claimed, could change everything,” Niyogi said. “We have been looking at the weather and climate outlook as a system that we reduce, reduce, reduce and then look at how it might affect humans. Now, we are changing the case and upscaling, starting at the human exposure scale and then moving outward. This is a new paradigm that we will need to study virus exposure and human environmental modeling systems that involve new detection and AI-like techniques. “
Reference: “US County-Wide Analysis of Climate, Urban Density, Mobility, Homestay, and Mask Wear in COVID-19” by Sajad Jamshidi, Maryam Baniasad and Dev Niyogi, Oct 26, 2020, International journal of environmental research and public health.
DOI: 10.3390 / ijerph17217847
The University of Texas at Austin, POT and the National Science Foundation funded the research.
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