Contribution of Temperature Increase to Restrain the Transmission of COVID-19

Mengyuan Ren; Rongjuan Pei; Bahabaike Jiangtulu; Junxi Chen; Tao Xue; Guofeng Shen; Xiaoru Yuan; Kexin Li; Changxin Lan; Zhen Chen; Xinwen Chen; Yun Wang; Xiaoqian Jia; Zewu Li; Audil Rashid; Tippawan Prapamontol; Xiuge Zhao; Zhaomin Dong; Yali Zhang; Le Zhang; Rongwei Ye; Zhiwen Li; Wuxiang Guan; Bin Wang

doi:10.1016/j.xinn.2020.100071

Contribution of Temperature Increase to Restrain the Transmission of COVID-19

Innovation (Camb). 2021 Feb 28;2(1):100071. doi: 10.1016/j.xinn.2020.100071. Epub 2020 Dec 16.

Authors

Mengyuan Ren^{1

2}, Rongjuan Pei³, Bahabaike Jiangtulu^{1

2}, Junxi Chen^{1

2}, Tao Xue^{1

2}, Guofeng Shen⁴, Xiaoru Yuan⁵, Kexin Li⁶, Changxin Lan^{1

2}, Zhen Chen³, Xinwen Chen³, Yun Wang³, Xiaoqian Jia^{1

2}, Zewu Li^{1

2}, Audil Rashid⁷, Tippawan Prapamontol⁸, Xiuge Zhao⁹, Zhaomin Dong¹⁰, Yali Zhang^{1

2}, Le Zhang^{1

2}, Rongwei Ye^{1

2}, Zhiwen Li^{1

2}, Wuxiang Guan³, Bin Wang^{1

2}

Affiliations

¹ Institute of Reproductive and Child Health, Peking University/ Key Laboratory of Reproductive Health, National Health Commission of the People's Republic of China, Beijing 100191, P. R. China.
² Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, School of Public Health, Peking University, Beijing 100191, P. R. China.
³ Wuhan Institute of Virology, Center for Biosafety Mega-Science, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Wuhan, Hubei, China.
⁴ College of Urban and Environmental Sciences, Peking University, Beijing 100871, P. R. China.
⁵ Key Laboratory of Machine Perception (Ministry of Education), and School of EECS, Peking University, Beijing, China.
⁶ Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research, CAS, Beijing 100101, P. R. China.
⁷ Faculty of Science, Botany Department, University of Gujrat, Hafiz Hayat Campus, Gujrat-50700, Pakistan.
⁸ Research Institute for Health Sciences, Chiang Mai University, Chiang Mai 50200, Thailand.
⁹ State Key Laboratory of Environmental Criteria and Risk Assessment, Chinese Research Academy of Environmental Sciences, Beijing 100012, P. R. China.
¹⁰ Beijing Advanced Innovation Center for Big Data-Based Precision Medicine, Beihang University, Beijing 100191, China.

Abstract

The COVID-19 outbreak has already become a global pandemic and containing this rapid worldwide transmission is of great challenge. The impacts of temperature and humidity on the COVID-19 transmission rate are still under discussion. Here, we elucidated these relationships by utilizing two unique scenarios, repeated measurement and natural experiment, using the COVID-19 cases reported from January 23 - February 21, 2020, in China. The modeling results revealed that higher temperature was most strongly associated with decreased COVID-19 transmission at a lag time of 8 days. Relative humidity (RH) appeared to have only a slight effect. These findings were verified by assessing SARS-CoV-2 infectivity under the relevant conditions of temperature (4°C-37°C) and RH (> 40%). We concluded that temperature increase made an important, but not determined, contribution to restrain the COVID-19 outbreak in China. It suggests that the emphasis of other effective controlling polices should be strictly implemented to restrain COVID-19 transmission in cold seasons.