Since the COVID19 pandemic has hit the world, many people have been thinking that hot weather might reduce the intensity and spread of the disease. However, the pandemic has taken a serious toll on people across the globe in summer. Well, a link between weather and COVID19 has been a subject of discussion for many scientists as well. It has been quite complicated in certain ways. Weather impacts the environment where the virus needs to survive to infect other people and at the same time, it depends upon human behavior as well, which causes the spread of the virus. A team of experts has shed some light on the role of weather in COVID19 transmission. This study has been led by scientists from the University of Texas at Austin. They have clearly mentioned that the weather does not have an important role in the spread of the virus.
Experts have said that the transmission of the virus entirely depends on human behavior irrespective of the hot or cold climate. The weather has very little part to play in the transmission of the disease from one person to another. The study has found that the effect of mobility has more effect on the spread of the virus as compared to weather. The lead author of the study Dr. Dev Niyogi has said that in terms of comparative value, the weather is the least significant parameter, which affects COVID19 infection. The study has classified weather as equivalent air temperature, which fuses humidity and temperature into a single value. Experts have observed that how this value has affected the transmission of the disease from March to July 2020 in different areas. The scale of the study ranges from counties and US states to countries, regions, and the whole world at large. At the counties and states scale, experts have studied the link between human behavior and the spread of the virus using cellphone data and people’s travel history. In the study, Human behavior has been examined in a general sense; experts have not linked it with the weather, which might have affected it. Scientists have adjusted their analyses so that population disparity does not tilt the findings of the study.
Across all the scales, experts have found that weather has nearly no impact on the spread of the virus. They have compared it with other factors using a statistical metric as well; they have found that the relative effect of the weather at the county level has been less than 3 percent. Experts have not seen any specific type of weather to be more useful for the spread of the virus. On the other side, human behavior has played a vital role in the transmission of the disease from one person to another. Taking trips and spending more time away from home both have been top contributing factors in the spread of the virus. Both factors have relative importance of 34 and 26 percent respectively. Another two essential factors have been population and urban density, which have a relative value of 23 and 13 percent respectively.
