ArticleGeoHealth2021
On the Environmental Determinants of COVID-19 Seasonality.
Article in GeoHealth, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 35 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
35 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 56 citations in OpenAlex.
- Combining and comparing regional SARS-CoV-2 epidemic dynamics in Italy: Bayesian meta-analysis of compartmental models and global sensitivity analysis.Frontiers in public health · 2022Pooled it
- Causal inference for targeted public health interventions: interactions among environmental, social, and economic determinants within the one health framework.Journal of water and health · 2026Review
- Article
- Water pollution drives environmental degradation in a seasonally influenced Neotropical coastal river.Environmental monitoring and assessment · 2026Article
- Etiological composition and epidemiological characteristics of acute respiratory infections in Hebei Province, 2023-2025.Frontiers in public health · 2026Article
- Exploring the Role of Genetic Diversity and Cultural Norms in COVID-19 Vulnerability: A Global Analysis.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2025Article
- Spatiotemporal Risk Assessment of H5 Avian Influenza in China: An Interpretable Machine Learning Approach to Uncover Multi-Scale Drivers.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2025Article
- Seasonal and periodic patterns in US COVID-19 mortality using the Variable Bandpass Periodic Block Bootstrap.PloS one · 2025Article
- Air pollution impacts from warehousing in the United States uncovered with satellite data.Nature communications · 2024Article
- The Inverted U-Shaped Relationship Between Socio-Economic Status and Infections During the COVID-19 Pandemic.GeoHealth · 2024Article
- As air relative humidity increases, infectivity of SARS-CoV-2 decreases within water droplets.QRB discovery · 2024Article
- Development of hybrid immunity during a period of high incidence of Omicron infections.International journal of epidemiology · 2023Article
- Seasonality of endemic COVID-19.mBio · 2023Article
- COVID-19 New Cases and Environmental Factors During Wet and Dry Seasons in West and Southern Africa.GeoHealth · 2023Article
- Development of Accurate Long-lead COVID-19 Forecast.PLoS computational biology · 2023Article
- Adapting an integrated acute respiratory infections sentinel surveillance to the COVID-19 pandemic requirements, Egypt, 2020-2022.Public health in practice (Oxford, England) · 2023Article
- Linkages between COVID-19, solar UV radiation, and the Montreal Protocol.Photochemical & photobiological sciences : Official journal of the European Photochemistry Association and the European Society for Photobiology · 2023Article
- Excess mortality in Ukraine during the course of COVID-19 pandemic in 2020-2021.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- Seasonal trends in COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations, and mortality in the United States and Europe.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- Macro-level drivers of SARS-CoV-2 transmission: A data-driven analysis of factors contributing to epidemic growth during the first wave of outbreaks in the United States.Spatial and spatio-temporal epidemiology · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
3 authors at 2 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Viral respiratory diseases (VRDs), such as influenza and COVID-19, are thought to spread faster during winter than during summer. It has been previously argued that cold and dry conditions are more conducive to the transmission of VRDs than warm and humid climates, although this relationship appears restricted to temperate regions and the causal relationship is not well understood. The severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 causing COVID-19 has emerged as a serious global public health problem after the first COVID-19 reports in Wuhan, China, in late 2019. It is still unclear whether this novel respiratory disease will ultimately prove to be a seasonal endemic disease. Here, we suggest that air drying capacity (ADC; an atmospheric state variable that controls the fate/evolution of the virus-laden droplets) and ultraviolet radiation (UV) are probable environmental determinants in shaping the transmission of COVID-19 at the seasonal time scale. These variables, unlike temperature and humidity, provide a physically based framework consistent with the apparent seasonal variability in COVID-19 and prevalent across a broad range of climates (e.g., Germany and India). Since this disease is known to be influenced by the compounding effect of social, biological, and environmental determinants, this study does not claim that these environmental determinants exclusively shape the seasonality of COVID-19. However, we argue that ADC and UV play a significant role in COVID-19 dynamics at the seasonal scale. These findings could help guide the development of a sound adaptation strategy against the pandemic over the coming seasons.
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