Evaluating temperature and humidity gradients of COVID-19 infection rates in light of Non-Pharmaceutical Interventions

  1. Joshua Choma
  2. Fabio Correa
  3. Salah-Eddine Dahbi
  4. Kentaro Hayasi
  5. Benjamin Lieberman
  6. Caroline Maslo
  7. Bruce Mellado
  8. Kgomotso Monnakgotla
  9. Jacques Naudé
  10. Xifeng Ruan
  11. Finn Stevenson

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Abstract

We evaluate potential temperature and humidity impact on the infection rate of COVID-19 with a data up to June 10 th 2020, which comprises a large geographical footprint. It is critical to analyse data from different countries or regions at similar stages of the pandemic in order to avoid picking up false gradients. The degree of severity of NPIs is found to be a good gauge of the stage of the pandemic for individual countries. Data points are classified according to the stringency index of the NPIs in order to ensure that comparisons between countries are made on equal footing. We find that temperature and relative humidity gradients don’t significantly deviate from the zero-gradient hypothesis. Upper limits on the absolute value of the gradients are set. The procedure chosen here yields 6 10 −3 ° C −1 and 3.3 10 −3 (%) −1 upper limits on the absolute values of the temperature and relative humidity gradients, respectively, with a 95% Confidence Level. These findings do not preclude existence of seasonal effects and are indicative that these are likely to be nuanced.

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    SciScore for 10.1101/2020.07.20.20158071: (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.

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

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  2. Version published to 10.1101/2020.07.20.20158071 on medRxiv