ArticleScientific reports2021
Structural equation modeling to shed light on the controversial role of climate on the spread of SARS-CoV-2.
Article in Scientific reports, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 9 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
9 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- The influence of weather and urban environment characteristics on upper respiratory tract infections: a systematic review.Frontiers in public health · 2025Pooled it
- Inferring Seasonal Modulation of Early SARS-CoV-2 Transmissibility from Cross-Country Environmental and Population-Level Predictors.Pathogens (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- Actual conditions of person-to-object contact and a proposal for prevention measures during the COVID-19 pandemic.Scientific reports · 2022Article
- Influence of weather factors on the incidence of COVID-19 in Spain.Medicina clinica (English ed.) · 2022Article
- Influence of weather factors on the incidence of COVID-19 in Spain.Medicina clinica · 2022Article
- Elucidating the role of environmental management of forests, air quality, solid waste and wastewater on the dissemination of SARS-CoV-2.Hygiene and environmental health advances · 2022Review
- A narrative review on the role of temperature and humidity in COVID-19: Transmission, persistence, and epidemiological evidence.Eco-Environment & Health · 2022Review
- Review
- Spatio-temporal prediction of the COVID-19 pandemic in US counties: modeling with a deep LSTM neural network.Scientific reports · 2021Article
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Authors and funding
17 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Climate seems to influence the spread of SARS-CoV-2, but the findings of the studies performed so far are conflicting. To overcome these issues, we performed a global scale study considering 134,871 virologic-climatic-demographic data (209 countries, first 16 weeks of the pandemic). To analyze the relation among COVID-19, population density, and climate, a theoretical path diagram was hypothesized and tested using structural equation modeling (SEM), a powerful statistical technique for the evaluation of causal assumptions. The results of the analysis showed that both climate and population density significantly influence the spread of COVID-19 (p < 0.001 and p < 0.01, respectively). Overall, climate outweighs population density (path coefficients: climate vs. incidence = 0.18, climate vs. prevalence = 0.11, population density vs. incidence = 0.04, population density vs. prevalence = 0.05). Among the climatic factors, irradiation plays the most relevant role, with a factor-loading of - 0.77, followed by temperature (- 0.56), humidity (0.52), precipitation (0.44), and pressure (0.073); for all p < 0.001. In conclusion, this study demonstrates that climatic factors significantly influence the spread of SARS-CoV-2. However, demographic factors, together with other determinants, can affect the transmission, and their influence may overcome the protective effect of climate, where favourable.
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