Meteorological factors and domestic new cases of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in nine Asian cities: A time-series analysis

Zonglin He; Yiqiao Chin; Jian Huang; Yi He; Babatunde O. Akinwunmi; Shinning Yu; Casper J.P. Zhang; Wai-kit Ming

The daily new cases of COVID-19 and meteorological data from January 20 to March 18, 2020 (61 days) in nine different cities are shown in Table 1 . During the study period, the temperature in the five cities in China ranged from -9 to 26.25℃, with that ranging from -9 to 26℃ in Beijing, from 0 to 22℃ in Shanghai, from 8.75 to 26.25 ℃ in Guangzhou, from 1 to 21.75℃ in Wuhan, and from 11.25 to 26.25℃ in Hong Kong. The temperature in Singapore ranged from 25.5 to 32.75℃, in Seoul from -9.5 to 12.25℃, in Tokyo from 0.75 to 18.5℃, and in Kuala Lumpur from 24.5 to 33.5℃. Figures 1 and 2 show the distribution of daily COVID-19 new cases associated with average temperature and average relative humidity over time, respectively. Pearson's correlations between daily COVID-19 cases and meteorological factors are shown in Table 2 . Daily confirmed new cases were negatively correlated with average temperature in Beijing (r = -0.565, P < 0.01), Shanghai (r = -0.471, P < 0.01), and Guangzhou (r = -0.530, P < 0.01), and, in contrast, positively correlated with that in Japan (r = 0.441, P < 0.01). The correlation between average temperature and relative humidity was found positive in Shanghai, Guangzhou, Hong Kong, Korea, and Japan, and negative in Beijing, Wuhan, Singapore, and Malaysia according to the pairwise Pearson correlation test ( Table 2) .