Air transportation, population density and temperature predict the spread of COVID-19 in Brazil

PeerJ

article

Pedro Pequeno¹  Bruna Mendel²  Clarissa Rosa¹  Mariane Bosholn¹  Jorge Luiz Souza³  Fabricio Baccaro⁴  Reinaldo Barbosa¹  William Magnusson¹ 

[1] Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas da Amazônia;Universidade Federal de Roraima;Instituto Nacional da Mata Atlântica;Universidade Federal do Amazonas

关键词: Climate;    Coronavirus;    Health;    Pandemic;   

DOI  :  10.7717/peerj.9322

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: Inra

【 摘 要 】

There is evidence that COVID-19, the disease caused by the betacoronavirus SARS-CoV-2, is sensitive to environmental conditions. However, such conditions often correlate with demographic and socioeconomic factors at larger spatial extents, which could confound this inference. We evaluated the effect of meteorological conditions (temperature, solar radiation, air humidity and precipitation) on 292 daily records of cumulative number of confirmed COVID-19 cases across the 27 Brazilian capital cities during the 1st month of the outbreak, while controlling for an indicator of the number of tests, the number of arriving flights, population density, proportion of elderly people and average income. Apart from increasing with time, the number of confirmed cases was mainly related to the number of arriving flights and population density, increasing with both factors. However, after accounting for these effects, the disease was shown to be temperature sensitive: there were more cases in colder cities and days, and cases accumulated faster at lower temperatures. Our best estimate indicates that a 1 °C increase in temperature has been associated with a decrease in confirmed cases of 8%. The quality of the data and unknowns limit the analysis, but the study reveals an urgent need to understand more about the environmental sensitivity of the disease to predict demands on health services in different regions and seasons.

【 授权许可】

CC BY