| Autor: |
Thazhathedath Hariharan, Hariprasad, Surendran, Anish Thekkumkara, Haridasan, Retheesh Kollerazhikathu, Venkitaraman, Sriram, Robert, Dennis, Narayanan, Sorna P., Mammen, Pratheesh C., Siddharth, Selva Raja, Kuriakose, Sekhar L. |
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| Zdroj: |
Geohealth; Oct2021, Vol. 5 Issue 10, p1-11, 11p |
| Abstrakt: |
Many of the respiratory pathogens show seasonal patterns and association with environmental factors. In this article, we conducted a cross‐sectional analysis of the influence of environmental factors, including climate variability, along with development indicators on the differential global spread and fatality of COVID‐19 during its early phase. Global climate data we used are monthly averaged gridded data sets of temperature, humidity and temperature anomaly. We used Human Development Index (HDI) to account for all nation wise socioeconomic factors that can affect the reporting of cases and deaths and build a stepwise negative binomial regression model. In the absence of a development indicator, all environmental variables excluding the specific humidity have a significant association with the spread and mortality of COVID‐19. Temperature has a weak negative association with COVID‐19 mortality. However, HDI is shown to confound the effect of temperature on the reporting of the disease. Temperature anomaly, which is being regarded as a global warming indicator, is positively associated with the pandemic's spread and mortality. Viewing newer infectious diseases like SARS‐CoV‐2 from the perspective of climate variability has a lot of public health implications, and it necessitates further research. Plain Language Summary: The spread and severity of many respiratory infectious diseases including COVID‐19 are related to environmental factors. Climate change is also a known contributor to an increased incidence of many emergent and reemergent infectious events. Here we looked for any association of factors such as temperature, specific humidity, and temperature anomaly with population‐adjusted numbers of COVID‐19 cases and deaths on a global perspective. We used the Human Development Index (HDI) as a surrogate indicator to represent various aspects of development such as per capita income, life expectancy, and measures of literacy, all of which can affect the reporting of cases and deaths. Our initial regression model, in the absence of the development indicator, gave significant results for all the environmental variables. But the inclusion of HDI into the model made the effect of humidity statistically insignificant and weakened the effect of temperature. A lower temperature is associated with a higher number of reported cases and deaths. Almost all temperate nations that used to report higher COVID‐19 numbers are far more developed than others. Thus development has confounded the relationship between temperature and the disease, which can be due to a higher number of tests done, better disease surveillance capabilities and having a literate population. A higher temperature anomaly, a long‐term climate variability indicator is shown to associate with an increase in the number of COVID‐19 cases and deaths in our model, which points toward the influence of climate change upon the disease spread and severity. Key Points: Climate variability has a significant association with COVID‐19 transmission and mortalitySurface air temperature and Specific humidity does not have any statistically significant association with COVID‐19 transmission, though there is a weak relationship between temperature and the pandemic's mortalityHuman development has a significant influence on case detection and reporting of COVID‐19; hence it can confound the effect of environmental variables [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
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Complementary Index |
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