The Role of Temperature and Humidity in the Early Evolution of SARS CoV-2

Abstract

The new coronavirus SARS CoV-2 which causes the COVID-19 was declared as a global pandemic at 11 of March 2020. Since then, many studies have been conducted in order to determine the importance of environmental factors,mainly the temperature and humidity, in the dynamics of the pandemic. Although there is some evidence that the environment can modulate the transmission of the virus, it is yet to be determined if seasonal and meteorological variations could play an important role in the spread of the virus. In this study, we analyse observational data from four di erent European countries in order to explore whether temperature and humidity in uence the reported incidence. It is observed that in Spain and Italy there is a negative correlation between temperature and humidity with the incidence of the disease. However, this is not the case for the four analyzed countries. Consequently, from the data analyzed here we cannot conclude that temperature or humidity are main drivers in the transmission dynamics of SARS CoV-2.