Relationship between Average Daily Temperature and Average Cumulative Daily Rate of Confirmed Cases of COVID-19

  1. Behzad Pirouz
  2. Amirsina Golmohammadi
  3. Hasti SaeidpourMasouleh
  4. Galileo Violini
  5. Behrouz Pirouz

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Abstract

AIMS

The main purpose of this study is to investigate the correlation between the average daily temperature and the rate of coronavirus epidemic growth in the infected regions.

BACKGROUND

The rapid outbreak of the new Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic and the spread of the virus worldwide, especially in the Northern Hemisphere, have prompted various investigations about the impact of environmental factors on the rate of development of this epidemic. Different studies have called attention to various parameters that may have influenced the spread of the virus, and in particular, the impact of climatic parameters has been emphasized.

OBJECTIVE

The main hypothesis object of our research is that between regions exhibiting a significant difference in the mean daily temperature, a significant difference is also observed in the average cumulative daily rate of confirmed cases and that this does not happen if there is no significant difference in mean daily temperature.

METHOD

The research hypothesis was investigated through statistical analysis. The F-test was used to test whether there is significant equality of variances for each pair of case studies, and then, by the T- Test, the existence of a significant difference was investigated. In all statistical tests, the confidence level of 95% is considered. In order to minimize the impact on the results of factors like the policy of the government or cultural differences among countries (food, exercise, weight, etc.), three case studies within five countries, namely Iran, Italy, Germany, Spain, and United States were compared separately.

RESULT

This statistical analysis shows that there is a correlation between the average temperature and the epidemic rate, and this is especially evident when differences in average daily temperature are significantly larger, as it happens for Bandar Abbas in Iran, Milan in Italy, Santa Cruz in Spain, and Los Angeles in the US. Besides, the analysis of the average air temperatures shows that the epidemic rates of COVID-19 were higher in the case studies with a lower average temperature. Instead, when no significant differences exist in the average daily temperature of two cities in the same country, there is no significant difference in the average cumulative daily rate of confirmed cases.

CONCLUSION

In all five selected countries, we found that when there is a significant difference in the daily mean temperature between two regions of a country, a significant difference also exists in the average cumulative daily rate of confirmed cases. Conversely, if there are no significant differences in the mean daily temperature of two regions in the same country, no significant difference is observed in the average cumulative daily rate of confirmed cases for these regions. In conclusion, the results of this study support the research hypothesis and confirm the effectiveness of the proposed method for analysis of the epidemic rates.

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  1. Version published to 10.1101/2020.04.10.20059337v3 on medRxiv
  2. ScreenIT

    SciScore for 10.1101/2020.04.10.20059337: (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

    Software and Algorithms
    SentencesResources
    The statistical analysis and set-up of SPSS Model: Mathematical models have been successfully used for the analysis of many hazards [32, 33].
    SPSS
    suggested: (SPSS, RRID:SCR_002865)

    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: We detected the following sentences addressing limitations in the study:
    One of the limitations of our work is due to the fact that in our analysis a possible correlation between the effects induced by temperature and those induced by other factors (e.g.social distancing, environmental pollution, seniority of the population, sanitation, lifestyles, etc.) was not taken into account.

    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.

    About SciScore

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  3. Version published to 10.1101/2020.04.10.20059337v2 on medRxiv
  4. Version published to 10.1101/2020.04.10.20059337v1 on medRxiv