Meteorological conditions and nonpharmaceutical interventions jointly determined local transmissibility of COVID-19 in 41 Chinese cities: A retrospective observational study

Abstract

BackgroundBefore effective vaccines become widely available, sufficient understanding of the impacts of climate, human movement and non-pharmaceutical interventions on the transmissibility of COVID-19 is needed but still lacking. MethodsWe collected by crowdsourcing a database of 11 003 COVID-19 cases from 305 cities outside Hubei Province from December 31, 2019 to April 27, 2020. We estimated the daily effective reproduction numbers (Rt) of COVID-19 in 41 cities where the crowdsourced case data are comparable to the official surveillance data. The impacts of meteorological variables, human movement indices and nonpharmaceutical emergency responses on Rt were evaluated with generalized estimation equation models. FindingsThe median Rt was 0•46 (IQR: 0•37–0•87) in the northern cities, higher than 0•20 (IQR: 0•09–0•52) in the southern cities (p=0•004). A higher local transmissibility of COVID-19 was associated with a low temperature, a relative humidity near 70–75%, and higher intracity and intercity human movement. An increase in temperature from 0℃ to 20℃ would reduce Rt by 30% (95 CI 10–46%). A further increase to 30℃ would result in another 17% (95% CI 5–27%) reduction. An increase in relative humidity from 40% to 75% would raise the transmissibility by 47% (95% CI 9–97%), but a further increase to 90% would reduce the transmissibility by 12% (95% CI 4–19%). The decrease in intracity human movement as a part of the highest-level emergency response in China reduced the transmissibility by 36% (95% CI 27–44%), compared to 5% (95% CI 1–9%) for restricting intercity transport. Other nonpharmaceutical interventions further reduced Rt by 39% (95% CI 31–47%). InterpretationClimate can affect the transmission of COVID-19 where effective interventions are implemented. Restrictions on intracity human movement may be needed in places where other nonpharmaceutical interventions are unable to mitigate local transmission. FundingChina Mega-Project on Infectious Disease Prevention; U.S. National Institutes of Health and National Science Foundation.