Meteorological variables, such as the ambient temperature and humidity, play a well-established role in the seasonal transmission of respiratory viruses and influenza in temperate climates. Since the onset of the novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, a growing body of literature has attempted to characterize the sensitivity of COVID-19 to meteorological factors and thus understand how changes in the weather and seasonality may impede COVID-19 transmission. Here we select a subset of this literature, summarize the diversity in these studies’ scopes and methodologies, and show the lack of consensus in their conclusions on the roles of temperature, humidity, and other meteorological factors on COVID-19 transmission dynamics. We discuss how several aspects of studies’ methodologies may challenge direct comparisons across studies and inflate the importance of meteorological factors on COVID-19 transmission. We further comment on outstanding challenges for this area of research and how future studies might overcome them by carefully considering robust modeling approaches, adjusting for mediating and covariate effects, and choosing appropriate scales of analysis. Highlights • Meteorology has contradicting roles in COVID-19 transmission in recent studies. • Inconsistent adjustments for lag and mediation complicates interstudy comparison. • We provide recommendations to avoid potentially spurious conclusions in future studies.
【저자키워드】 COVID-19, SARS-CoV-2, virus transmission, temperature, Humidity, meteorology, 【초록키워드】 pandemic, Influenza, Transmission, novel coronavirus disease, sensitivity, respiratory virus, comparison, Research, methodology, Analysis, COVID-19 transmission, Consensus, Factor, approaches, covariate, ambient, recommendation, Effects, robust, lack, changes in, overcome, subset, complicate, variables, 【제목키워드】 recommendation,