"We should take personal precautions, be aware of the factors in urban exposure."īaniasad, a biochemist and pharmacist, said that assumptions about how coronavirus would respond with weather are largely informed by studies conducted in laboratory settings on related viruses. "We shouldn't think of the problem as something driven by weather and climate," Jamshidi said. The next two important factors were population and urban density, with a relative importance of about 23% and 13% respectively. Taking trips and spending time away from home were the top two contributing factors to COVID-19 growth, with a relative importance of about 34% and 26% respectively. In contrast, the data showed the clear influence of human behavior - and the outsized influence of individual behaviors. When it was compared with other factors using a statistical metric that breaks down the relative contribution of each factor toward a particular outcome, the weather's relative importance at the county scale was less than 3%, with no indication that a specific type of weather promoted spread over another. At each scale, the researchers adjusted their analyses so that population differences did not skew results.Īcross scales, the scientists found that the weather had nearly no influence. The study examined human behavior in a general sense and did not attempt to connect it to how the weather may have influenced it. states and counties, to countries, regions and the world at large.Īt the county and state scale, the researchers also investigated the relationship between coronavirus infection and human behavior, using cellphone data to study travel habits. The scientists than analyzed how this value tracked with coronavirus spread in different areas from March to July 2020, with their scale ranging from U.S. The study defined weather as "equivalent air temperature," which combines temperature and humidity into a single value. 26 in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health.Ĭo-authors are Sajad Jamshidi, a research assistant at Purdue University, and Maryam Baniasad, a doctoral candidate at Ohio State University. "In terms of relative importance, weather is one of the last parameters." "The effect of weather is low and other features such as mobility have more impact than weather," said Dev Niyogi, a professor at UT Austin's Jackson School of Geosciences and Cockrell School of Engineering who led the research. That means whether it's hot or cold outside, the transmission of COVID-19 from one person to the next depends almost entirely on human behavior. Research led by The University of Texas at Austin is adding some clarity on weather's role in COVID-19 infection, with a new study finding that temperature and humidity do not play a significant role in coronavirus spread. But it also influences human behavior, which moves the virus from one host to another.
Weather influences the environment in which the coronavirus must survive before infecting a new host. The link between weather and COVID-19 is complicated.
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