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Preliminary Analysis of Relationships between COVID19 and Climate, Morphology, and Urbanization in the Lombardy Region (Northern Italy)

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic is the most severe global health and socioeconomic crisis of our time, and represents the greatest challenge faced by the world since the end of the Second World War. The academic literature indicates that climatic features, specifically temperature a...

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Autores principales: Fazzini, Massimiliano, Baresi, Claudia, Bisci, Carlo, Bna, Claudio, Cecili, Alessandro, Giuliacci, Andrea, Illuminati, Sonia, Pregliasco, Fabrizio, Miccadei, Enrico
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7579304/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32977546
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph17196955
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author Fazzini, Massimiliano
Baresi, Claudia
Bisci, Carlo
Bna, Claudio
Cecili, Alessandro
Giuliacci, Andrea
Illuminati, Sonia
Pregliasco, Fabrizio
Miccadei, Enrico
author_facet Fazzini, Massimiliano
Baresi, Claudia
Bisci, Carlo
Bna, Claudio
Cecili, Alessandro
Giuliacci, Andrea
Illuminati, Sonia
Pregliasco, Fabrizio
Miccadei, Enrico
author_sort Fazzini, Massimiliano
collection PubMed
description The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic is the most severe global health and socioeconomic crisis of our time, and represents the greatest challenge faced by the world since the end of the Second World War. The academic literature indicates that climatic features, specifically temperature and absolute humidity, are very important factors affecting infectious pulmonary disease epidemics - such as severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS); however, the influence of climatic parameters on COVID-19 remains extremely controversial. The goal of this study is to individuate relationships between several climate parameters (temperature, relative humidity, accumulated precipitation, solar radiation, evaporation, and wind direction and intensity), local morphological parameters, and new daily positive swabs for COVID-19, which represents the only parameter that can be statistically used to quantify the pandemic. The daily deaths parameter was not considered, because it is not reliable, due to frequent administrative errors. Daily data on meteorological conditions and new cases of COVID-19 were collected for the Lombardy Region (Northern Italy) from 1 March, 2020 to 20 April, 2020. This region exhibited the largest rate of official deaths in the world, with a value of approximately 1700 per million on 30 June 2020. Moreover, the apparent lethality was approximately 17% in this area, mainly due to the considerable housing density and the extensive presence of industrial and craft areas. Both the Mann–Kendall test and multivariate statistical analysis showed that none of the considered climatic variables exhibited statistically significant relationships with the epidemiological evolution of COVID-19, at least during spring months in temperate subcontinental climate areas, with the exception of solar radiation, which was directly related and showed an otherwise low explained variability of approximately 20%. Furthermore, the average temperatures of two highly representative meteorological stations of Molise and Lucania (Southern Italy), the most weakly affected by the pandemic, were approximately 1.5 °C lower than those in Bergamo and Brescia (Lombardy), again confirming that a significant relationship between the increase in temperature and decrease in virulence from COVID-19 is not evident, at least in Italy.
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spelling pubmed-75793042020-10-29 Preliminary Analysis of Relationships between COVID19 and Climate, Morphology, and Urbanization in the Lombardy Region (Northern Italy) Fazzini, Massimiliano Baresi, Claudia Bisci, Carlo Bna, Claudio Cecili, Alessandro Giuliacci, Andrea Illuminati, Sonia Pregliasco, Fabrizio Miccadei, Enrico Int J Environ Res Public Health Article The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic is the most severe global health and socioeconomic crisis of our time, and represents the greatest challenge faced by the world since the end of the Second World War. The academic literature indicates that climatic features, specifically temperature and absolute humidity, are very important factors affecting infectious pulmonary disease epidemics - such as severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS); however, the influence of climatic parameters on COVID-19 remains extremely controversial. The goal of this study is to individuate relationships between several climate parameters (temperature, relative humidity, accumulated precipitation, solar radiation, evaporation, and wind direction and intensity), local morphological parameters, and new daily positive swabs for COVID-19, which represents the only parameter that can be statistically used to quantify the pandemic. The daily deaths parameter was not considered, because it is not reliable, due to frequent administrative errors. Daily data on meteorological conditions and new cases of COVID-19 were collected for the Lombardy Region (Northern Italy) from 1 March, 2020 to 20 April, 2020. This region exhibited the largest rate of official deaths in the world, with a value of approximately 1700 per million on 30 June 2020. Moreover, the apparent lethality was approximately 17% in this area, mainly due to the considerable housing density and the extensive presence of industrial and craft areas. Both the Mann–Kendall test and multivariate statistical analysis showed that none of the considered climatic variables exhibited statistically significant relationships with the epidemiological evolution of COVID-19, at least during spring months in temperate subcontinental climate areas, with the exception of solar radiation, which was directly related and showed an otherwise low explained variability of approximately 20%. Furthermore, the average temperatures of two highly representative meteorological stations of Molise and Lucania (Southern Italy), the most weakly affected by the pandemic, were approximately 1.5 °C lower than those in Bergamo and Brescia (Lombardy), again confirming that a significant relationship between the increase in temperature and decrease in virulence from COVID-19 is not evident, at least in Italy. MDPI 2020-09-23 2020-10 /pmc/articles/PMC7579304/ /pubmed/32977546 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph17196955 Text en © 2020 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Fazzini, Massimiliano
Baresi, Claudia
Bisci, Carlo
Bna, Claudio
Cecili, Alessandro
Giuliacci, Andrea
Illuminati, Sonia
Pregliasco, Fabrizio
Miccadei, Enrico
Preliminary Analysis of Relationships between COVID19 and Climate, Morphology, and Urbanization in the Lombardy Region (Northern Italy)
title Preliminary Analysis of Relationships between COVID19 and Climate, Morphology, and Urbanization in the Lombardy Region (Northern Italy)
title_full Preliminary Analysis of Relationships between COVID19 and Climate, Morphology, and Urbanization in the Lombardy Region (Northern Italy)
title_fullStr Preliminary Analysis of Relationships between COVID19 and Climate, Morphology, and Urbanization in the Lombardy Region (Northern Italy)
title_full_unstemmed Preliminary Analysis of Relationships between COVID19 and Climate, Morphology, and Urbanization in the Lombardy Region (Northern Italy)
title_short Preliminary Analysis of Relationships between COVID19 and Climate, Morphology, and Urbanization in the Lombardy Region (Northern Italy)
title_sort preliminary analysis of relationships between covid19 and climate, morphology, and urbanization in the lombardy region (northern italy)
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7579304/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32977546
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph17196955
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