COVID19 is a seasonal climate-driven disease across both hemispheres

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Abstract

The role of climate in the population dynamics of COVID-19 remains poorly understood, and a true seasonal signature has remained elusive. Data from both hemispheres and the second wave provide opportunities to further examine climatic drivers. With a statistical method designed to detect transitory associations, we show consistent negative effects of temperature and absolute humidity at large spatial scales. At finer spatial resolutions we substantiate these connections during the seasonal rise and fall of COVID-19. Strong disease responses are identified between 12-18°C for Temperature and 4-12 g/m 3 for Absolute Humidity. These results classify COVID-19 as a seasonal low-temperature infection, and point to the airborne pathway as an important contribution to transmission for SARS-CoV-2, with implications for control measures we discuss.

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  1. SciScore for 10.1101/2020.12.16.20248310: (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
    From the 2m and the dew point temperature, we derived relative humidity, and used the atmos Python package (58) to calculate absolute humidity.
    Python
    suggested: (IPython, RRID:SCR_001658)

    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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