Abstract
Extreme precipitation events (EPE) change the natural and built environments and alter human behavior in ways that facilitate infectious disease transmission. EPEs are expected with high confidence to increase in frequency and are thus of great public health importance. This scoping review seeks to summarize the mechanisms and severity of impacts of EPEs on infectious diseases, to provide a conceptual framework for the influence of EPEs on infectious respiratory diseases, and to define areas of future study currently lacking in this field. The effects of EPEs are well-studied with respect to enteric, vector-borne, and allergic illness where they are shown to moderately increase risk of illness, but not well-understood in relation to infectious respiratory illness. We propose a framework for a similar influence of EPEs on infectious respiratory viruses through several plausible pathways: decreased UV radiation, increased ambient relative humidity, and changes to human behavior (increased time indoors and use of heating and cooling systems). However, limited work has evaluated meteorologic risk factors for infectious respiratory diseases. Future research is needed to evaluate the effects of EPEs on infectious respiratory diseases using individual-level case surveillance, fine spatial scales, and lag periods suited to the incubation periods of the disease under study, as well as a full characterization of susceptible, vulnerable, and sensitive population characteristics.
Highlights
Transmission of infectious respiratory viruses depends on contact between a susceptible individual and a viable virion shed by an infectious individual, and the likelihood of this contact event occurring and resulting in a new infection is dependent upon a number of environmental factors
A basic assumption of linear regression modeling is for the existence of a linear relationship between the dependent and independent variables—an assumption that may be violated in these cases as we propose the effect on infection dynamics of a change in daily precipitation from, for example, 0 cm to 1 cm is likely to be stronger than a change from 10 cm to 11 cm
Precipitation and Extreme precipitation events (EPE) have increased over time and will continue to increase due to climate change and increasing global temperatures
Summary
Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Through increasing global temperatures, rising sea levels, challenges to food production, and population displacement, climate change significantly threatens public health These threats come in the form of direct impacts of weather events, effects mediated through changing environmental systems, and effects mediated through changing human systems [6] and are projected by a World. The most obvious effect of EPEs, flash flooding, cause significant direct harm to human health through injury and drowning, but these events are associated with environmental and behavioral changes that foster transmission of many infectious diseases. These associations are well-established with regard to water- and vector-borne illness, but less well-studied in other classes of. Availability and use of HVAC units, as well as their efficiency and effectiveness in removing infectious microbes, are differential with respect to household income and their effect on indoor environmental conditions during precipitation events may vary among strata of socioeconomic status
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