The Effect of Humidity and Temperature on Indoor and Outdoor COVID-19 Infections

Abstract

Environmental conditions and their association with COVID-19 have significantly attracted scientists’ attention. The current study links COVID-19 with climate indicators by comparing two configurations: indoor infections in a University of Duhok (UOD) building and outdoor infections within the boundaries of the Duhok Governorate (DG). The collected data included temperature and relative humidity (RH) and confirmed cases for indoor and outdoor configurations over 5 and 11 months, respectively. For the indoor infections, data were collected over the period of 5 weekdays, while for the outdoor infections, they were collected on the days when statistics were published. The prospective cross-section design was used for different statistical analyses. The overall indoor infections were very low, and the maximum values for RH and temperature were approximately <24% and <20°C, respectively; in the one-sample t-test, the results were significantly correlated ( p value <0.05) with the confirmed COVID-19 cases. For outdoor infections, using the correlation bivariate method, the study found that the RH and temperature results significantly correlated ( p value <0.05) with the confirmed COVID-19 cases. However, for indoor configuration, other than for Tmax, the results were not associated. As for the outdoor infections, the RH and temperature averages were high enough to put in groups to employ the one-way repeated ANOVA and general linear model with the same results. The means of the RHlow, RHmedium, and RHh groups were significantly correlated ( p value <0.05) with COVID-19. However, the means of the medium RH and high RH groups were not significantly associated with the increasing outdoor infections. This study will contribute to the reduction of overall COVID-19 infections.