Mediation by human mobility of the association between temperature and COVID-19 transmission rate

Abstract

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic is a major threat to global health. Relevant studies have shown that ambient temperature may influence the spread of novel coronavirus. However, the effect of ambient temperature on COVID-19 remains controversial. Human mobility is also closely related to the pandemic of COVID-19, which could be affected by temperature at the same time. The purpose of this study is to explore the underlying mechanism of the association of temperature with COVID-19 transmission rate by linking human mobility. The effective reproductive number, meteorological conditions and human mobility data in 47 countries are collected. Panel data models with fixed effects are used to analyze the association of ambient temperature with COVID-19 transmission rate, and the mediation by human mobility. Our results show that there is a negative relationship between temperature and COVID-19 transmission rate. We also observe that temperature is positively associated with human mobility and human mobility is positively related to COVID-19 transmission rate. Thus, the suppression effect (also known as the inconsistent mediation effect) of human mobility is confirmed, which remains robust when different lag structures are used. These findings provide evidence that temperature can influence the spread of COVID-19 by affecting human mobility. Therefore, although temperature is negatively related to COVID-19 transmission rate, governments and the public should pay more attention to control measures since people are more likely to go out when temperature rising. Our results could partially explain the reason why COVID-19 is not prevented by warm weather in some countries.