Climatic characteristics of different COVID-19 pandemic waves across both hemispheres.

Fontal, A., Bouma, MJ, San-José, A., et al. Climatic characteristics of different COVID-19 pandemic waves across both hemispheres. NAT Comput Sci 1, 655-665 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s43588-021-00136-6

Commentary

Because the role of climate and seasonal characteristics in the epidemiology of SARS-CoV-2 remains poorly understood, we show the strong and consistent negative effects of both temperature and absolute humidity at large spatial scales using statistical methods designed to detect temporal associations.

At finer spatial resolution, we demonstrate these connections between the seasonal rise and fall of COVID-19.

A strong disease response is identified in the first two waves, suggesting a clear range of temperature and absolute humidity similar to that described for seasonal influenza.

In the case of COVID-19, for all regions and pandemic waves studied, the process-based model incorporating temperature-dependent transmission rates is superior to the baseline formulation in the absence of drivers or sinusoidal seasonality.

The results classify COVID-19 as a seasonal low-temperature infection and suggest an important contribution of the airborne route in the transmission of SARS-CoV-2.