METEOROLOGICAL FACTORS ASSOCIATED WITH THE SPREAD OF THE COVID-19 VIRUS

Abstract

SESSION TITLE: Chest Infections Posters SESSION TYPE: Original Investigation Posters PRESENTED ON: October 18-21, 2020 PURPOSE: In December 2019, a SARS-CoV-2 (Severe acute respiratory failure syndrome Coronavirus- 2) virus emerged from Wuhan, China causing SARS and other pulmonary infections (COVID-19) that rapidly spread to other parts of the world, causing a major pandemic. There is data suggesting that this virus will follow similar trends as the 2009 Influenza H1N1 and 2002 SARS-COV, due geographical and meteorological factors, being the most importants the temperature, relative humidity and wind speed. We aim to analyze the impact of geographical and meteorological factors in the incidence of COVID19. METHODS: We analyzed the frequency of COVID19 cases along geographical and meteorological data from 84 regions around the world from January to March 2020, we divided the regions if they had less than 1, 000 cases vs more than 1, 000 cases of COVID-19. The meteorological data was collected from the Climate Re-analyzer platform from the Climate Change Institute at University of Maine, the National Science foundation and Russell Grinnell Memorial Trust. The monthly incidence of the cases was collected by the Mapping 2019-nCOV tool from the Center of Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) at Johns Hopkins University. We compare the temperature (° Celsius), latitude (° North and ° South), humidity (%) wind speed (km/h) and wind direction (0°-360°) between areas with above 1, 000 cases of COVID19 vs areas with less than 1, 000 cases. Categorical variables were compared using chi-square, and a univariate linear regression model was created. We used SPSS version 25.0 (Armonk, NY: IBM Corp.) for statistical analysis. RESULTS: We found 84 regions around the world affected by COVID-19 from January 1st to March 1st, 2020. Regions with more that 1, 000 COVID-19 cases were more likely to have lower minimum temperature (5.05°C vs 9.18°c; P: <0.05), lower maximum temperature (6.22°C vs 7.97°C; P:<0.05), no difference in wind direction, higher maximum wind speed (3.29km/h vs 2.36km/h; P:<0.05), no difference between average humidity, and to be located above 30 degrees in north latitude (32% vs 11%; P<0.05) presented more cases. See table 1 and table 2. CONCLUSIONS: Regions with more than one thousand cases were statistically significantly more likely to have minimum average temperature of -0.3 ° Celsius, maximum wind speed 14.85 km / h, humidity average of 75.65% and with a latitude greater than 30 ° north. Furthers studies with larger sample are needed to assess the geographical and meteorological impact in COVID-19 pandemic. CLINICAL IMPLICATIONS: COVID19, Pandemic, meteorological data. DISCLOSURES: no disclosure on file for Waldemar Castillo; no disclosure on file for Jose Waldemar Castillo; No relevant relationships by EMILIO CASTILLO, source=Web Response No relevant relationships by Maria Choc, source=Web Response No relevant relationships by Juan Del Cid Fratti, source=Web Response No relevant relationships by Luis Godínez, source=Web Response No relevant relationships by gabriel rios, source=Web Response No relevant relationships by Angel Soto, source=Web Response