Abstract
The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic is the most severe global health and socioeconomic crisis of our time, and represents the greatest challenge faced by the world since the end of the Second World War. The academic literature indicates that climatic features, specifically temperature and absolute humidity, are very important factors affecting infectious pulmonary disease epidemics - such as severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS); however, the influence of climatic parameters on COVID-19 remains extremely controversial. The goal of this study is to individuate relationships between several climate parameters (temperature, relative humidity, accumulated precipitation, solar radiation, evaporation, and wind direction and intensity), local morphological parameters, and new daily positive swabs for COVID-19, which represents the only parameter that can be statistically used to quantify the pandemic. The daily deaths parameter was not considered, because it is not reliable, due to frequent administrative errors. Daily data on meteorological conditions and new cases of COVID-19 were collected for the Lombardy Region (Northern Italy) from 1 March, 2020 to 20 April, 2020. This region exhibited the largest rate of official deaths in the world, with a value of approximately 1700 per million on 30 June 2020. Moreover, the apparent lethality was approximately 17% in this area, mainly due to the considerable housing density and the extensive presence of industrial and craft areas. Both the Mann–Kendall test and multivariate statistical analysis showed that none of the considered climatic variables exhibited statistically significant relationships with the epidemiological evolution of COVID-19, at least during spring months in temperate subcontinental climate areas, with the exception of solar radiation, which was directly related and showed an otherwise low explained variability of approximately 20%. Furthermore, the average temperatures of two highly representative meteorological stations of Molise and Lucania (Southern Italy), the most weakly affected by the pandemic, were approximately 1.5 °C lower than those in Bergamo and Brescia (Lombardy), again confirming that a significant relationship between the increase in temperature and decrease in virulence from COVID-19 is not evident, at least in Italy.
Highlights
During the second half of December 2019, the World Health Organization (WHO) reportedlyDuring the second half of December 2019, the World Health Organization (WHO) reportedly received information about an epidemic with unidentified etiology from Wuhan (Hubei, China)
11 February 2020, this epidemic was officially named coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) and was February 2020, this epidemic was officially named coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) and was acknowledged as an infectious disease resulting in a public health emergency, as it quickly spread acknowledged as an infectious disease resulting in a public health emergency, as it quickly spread within China and to 24 additional countries throughout the world [1,2]
The daily municipal epidemiological parameters used for the analysis were provided by the provincial ATS, while the meteorological and climatic parameters—minimum and maximum temperature (◦ C), average relative humidity (%), diurnal solar radiation sum (W/m2 ), wind direction and speed, and evaporation—were provided by automatic weather stations (AWSs) owned by the ARPA
Summary
During the second half of December 2019, the World Health Organization (WHO) reportedly. During the second half of December 2019, the World Health Organization (WHO) reportedly received information about an epidemic with unidentified etiology from Wuhan (Hubei, China). On received information about an epidemic with unidentified etiology from Wuhan (Hubei, China). The SARS-CoV-2 or COVID-19 pandemic had become a major global health. The SARS-CoV-2 or COVID-19 pandemic had become a major global health threat. The last time the world responded to a global emerging disease epidemic of a similar scale threat. The last time the world responded to a global emerging disease epidemic of a similar scale with no access to vaccines was in 1918–1919, with the H1N1 “Spanish” influenza pandemic. While our understanding of infectious diseases and their prevention is very different than that in 1918, our understanding of infectious diseases and their prevention is very different than that in 1918, most of the countries across the world face the same challenge today with COVID-19, a virus with most of the countries across the world face the same challenge today with COVID-19, a virus with comparable lethality to H1N1
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