Global evidence for ultraviolet radiation decreasing COVID-19 growth rates
Tamma Carleton, Jules Cornetet, Peter Huybers, Kyle C Meng, Jonathan Proctor
doi:10.1073/pnas.2012370118/-/DCSupplemental.y
With nearly every country combating the 2019 novel coronavirus (COVID-19), there is a need to understand how local environmental conditions may modify transmission. To date, quantifying seasonality of the disease has been limited by scarce data and the difficulty of isolating climatological variables from other drivers of transmission in observational studies. We combine a spatially resolved dataset of confirmed COVID-19 cases, composed of 3,235 regions across 173 countries, with local environmental conditions and a statistical approach developed to quantify causal effects of environmental conditions in observational data settings. We find that ultraviolet (UV) radiation has a statistically significant effect on daily COVID-19 growth rates: a SD increase in UV lowers the daily growth rate of COVID-19 cases by ∼1 percentage point over the subsequent 2.5 wk, relative to an average in-sample growth rate of 13.2%. The time pattern of lagged effects peaks 9 to 11 d after UV exposure, consistent with the combined timescale of incubation, testing, and reporting. Cumulative effects of temperature and humidity are not statistically significant. Simulations illustrate how seasonal changes in UV have influenced regional patterns of COVID-19 growth rates from January to June, indicating that UV has a substantially smaller effect on the spread of the disease than social distancing policies. Furthermore, total COVID-19 seasonality has indeterminate sign for most regions during this period due to uncertain effects of other environmental variables. Our findings indicate UV exposure influences COVID-19 cases, but a comprehensive understanding of seasonality awaits further analysis. COVID-19 | ultraviolet radiation | seasonality I n late 2019, a novel virus species from the family Coronaviridae, referred to as severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), began spreading throughout China (1). Central among SARS-CoV-2 concerns are its relatively high transmissivity and case fatality rates (2). In the ensuing months, the virus spread globally, prompting the World Health Organization to declare a pandemic on March 11, 2020. At the time of this writing, cases of COVID-19, the disease caused by SARS-CoV-2, have been detected in almost every country (Fig. 1A ), with the number of confirmed global cases in the tens of millions. Much remains unknown about COVID-19. An important question concerns how environmental conditions modify COVID-19 transmission. In particular, sensitivity to environmental conditions that vary seasonally may allow prediction of transmission characteristics around the globe over the coming months and have implications for seasonal reemergence of infections (3). Prior evidence from a few other viruses suggests the possibility of COVID-19 seasonality. For instance, H3N2, 2009 H1N1, and other strains of influenza exhibit sensitivity to local temperature and specific humidity (4-8). Furthermore, related strains of coronavirus and..
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