Causal empirical estimates suggest COVID-19 transmission rates are highly seasonal
Tamma Carleton, View ORCID ProfileKyle C. Meng
doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.03.26.20044420
Abstract
Nearly every country is now combating the 2019 novel coronavirus (COVID-19). It has been hypothesized that if COVID-19 exhibits seasonality, changing temperatures in the coming months will shift transmission patterns around the world. Such projections, however, require an estimate of the relationship between COVID-19 and temperature at a global scale, and one that isolates the role of temperature from confounding factors, such as public health capacity. This paper provides the first plausibly causal estimates of the relationship between COVID-19 transmission and local temperature using a global sample comprising of 166,686 confirmed new COVID-19 cases from 134 countries from January 22, 2020 to March 15, 2020. We find robust statistical evidence that a 1°C increase in local temperature reduces transmission by 13% [-21%, -4%, 95%CI]. In contrast, we do not find that specific humidity or precipitation influence transmission.
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