Measuring the impact of climate and air quality on COVID-19 transmission dynamics: a tale of two cities in pandemic preparedness
Gayathry R Menon, Sayooj Aby Jose, Asaph Young Chun, Anuwat Jirawattanapanit, Hsuan-Wei Lee · 2026
Read Measuring the impact of climate and air quality on COVID-19 transmission dynamics: a tale of two cities in pandemic preparedness by Gayathry R Menon, Sayooj Aby Jose, Asaph Young Chun, Anuwat Jirawattanapanit, Hsuan-Wei Lee (2026) in the Tower of Babel, a free online library of public-domain works preserved in clean, searchable text. No sign-up. The full text is served as a plain-text file at a predictable URL, where text is present: https://antarctic-labs.com/tower-of-babel/PMC13479564.txt.
Description
Gayathry R. Menon and coauthors published a 2026 comparison of how weather and air quality shaped COVID-19 spread in two Korean cities, Daegu and Seoul, during the first half of 2020. Nine meteorological and pollution factors were modeled with flexible curve methods that allow non-linear effects. Risk zones were identified by percentiles, and days were grouped by clustering.
Daegu's transmission was driven mainly by climate, with the model explaining about 63 percent of variation and risk rising at both temperature extremes. Its worst days averaged about 279 cases under cool, moderately dry conditions. Seoul showed a stronger pollution signature, with risk climbing steadily alongside temperature and two traffic-related pollutants. The authors argue pandemic preparedness plans must be tuned city by city rather than copied nationally.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | Gayathry R Menon, Sayooj Aby Jose, Asaph Young Chun, Anuwat Jirawattanapanit, Hsuan-Wei Lee |
|---|---|
| YEAR | 2026 |
| COLLECTION | PAPERS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 70461 |
| LICENSE | https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 |
| RIGHTS | CC BY |
| SOURCE | Europe PMC |