Seasonality and uncertainty in global COVID-19 growth rates

  1. Cory Merow
  2. Mark C. Urban

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Abstract

The virus causing COVID-19 has spread rapidly worldwide. It remains unknown whether summer weather will reduce its spread and justify relaxing political interventions and restarting economic activities. We develop statistical models that predict the maximum potential of COVID-19 worldwide and throughout the year. We find that UV light, in particular, is associated with decreased disease growth rate relative to other analyzed factors. Based on these associations with weather, we predict that COVID-19 will decrease temporarily during summer, rebound by autumn, and peak next winter. However, uncertainty remains high, and many factors besides climate, such as social interventions, will influence transmission. Thus, the world must remain vigilant, and continued interventions will likely be needed until a vaccine becomes available.

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  1. Version published to 10.1073/pnas.2008590117
  2. ScreenIT

    SciScore for 10.1101/2020.04.19.20071951: (What is this?)

    Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.

    Table 1: Rigor

    NIH rigor criteria are not applicable to paper type.

    Table 2: Resources

    No key resources detected.

    Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).

    Results from LimitationRecognizer: An explicit section about the limitations of the techniques employed in this study was not found. We encourage authors to address study limitations.

    Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.

    Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.

    Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.

    Results from rtransparent:
    • Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • No protocol registration statement was detected.

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  3. Version published to 10.1101/2020.04.19.20071951v1 on medRxiv