Meteorology and air quality have no role in COVID-19 transmission: WMO

New Delhi: The World Meteorological Organization’s COVID-19 Task Team has revealed that meteorology and air quality played a secondary role in disease transmission.

The report said, “There has been no evidence that certain weather conditions absolutely preclude transmission, as had been suggested by some commentators early in the pandemic”.

WMO also explained that the findings suggest that associations between weather and COVID-19 incidence (via impacts on transmission) and severe outcomes are complex and likely non-linear.

Task Team chair, Dr Ben Zaitchik, Department of Earth & Planetary Sciences, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, USA said that “Efforts from around the world to understand meteorology and air quality impacts on SARS-CoV-2 transmission and COVID-19 severity have yielded new approaches to data, new cross-disciplinary collaborations, and a broad appreciation of how difficult it is to disentangle risk factors during an ongoing pandemic”.

“The specific findings of these studies are complex and will continue to be examined in coming years. Notwithstanding the nuance of those results, it is clear that researchers and the public have learned a tremendous amount about how environmental data can and cannot be used when predicting the spread of a respiratory virus,” said Dr Zaitchik.

The WMO said While meteorology and air quality factors may have been secondary to other influences in the first years of the pandemic, it must be noted that the number of infections and deaths from COVID-19 was very large, such that even secondary factors can have large total impact.

“For this reason, it is critical that researchers continue to study the role of MAQ factors in COVID-19 and the potential to apply such knowledge to pandemic preparedness and response,” it said.

Lessons learned from the pandemic showed how environmental data can and cannot be used when predicting the spread of a respiratory virus.

It is therefore critical that researchers continue to study the role of meteorological and air quality factors in COVID-19, given the potential to use such knowledge to prepare for and respond to future international health emergencies, said WMO.

The updated umbrella review was commissioned by the WMO Research Board’s COVID-19 Task Team and it updates findings released in May 2022 regarding Meteorological and Air Quality (MAQ) Services for COVID-19 Risk Reduction and Management.