TOKYO – (ACN Newswire) – On
March 6th Azabu Insights proposed a theory that coronavirus seemed to be
spreading faster in cold countries than in warm countries. We followed this up
with an update on March 11th showing that at that time the data was showing
ninety-eight percent of the cases were all in cold countries.
Since then we have had many comments from different people.
One very respected business person who works in life sciences, told us he
thought it was a, “multivariate problem,” and suggested that,
“It’s possible, for example, that infection rate would be strongly
correlated with people meeting in enclosed areas will less have outside air
circulation.” He was saying that our analysis might be true but it might
not be, “because of the temperature,” but because of something that
“relates to temperature.”
Another doctor said he thought it was because in spring
people go outside more and they are less impacted by the dry air of air
conditioning systems.
One hospital vice president, whom we highly respect,
responded politely, “I do not think that COVID-19 relates to
temperature.”
Our conclusion on March 11th was: “As previously, we
conclude that COVID-19 can spread in warm regions but seems to spread much more
quickly in colder regions. We hope that countries and regions around the world
will aggressively work to keep the virus at bay until the summer months and
hope that the warm temperatures will support further containment.”
You can see, then as now, we were certainly not 100%
convinced that temperature was the driver or that temperature would save the day.
But we do remain optimistic.
As recently as March 21, a virologist, Christian Drosten,
who advises the German government in their so-far successful tackling of the
coronavirus crisis, expressed some optimism that in the coming months we may
have some success beating the virus. When asked about the effect of
temperature, he responded: “This effect isn’t likely to be particularly
pronounced. It won’t be able to stop the outbreak, but it may help a bit. And
combined with the isolation measures, I strongly expect that we will see an
impact in a month.” It seems he also was not 100% convinced that higher
temperature in summer months would solve things, but he thought it could help
and envisioned more success at beating the virus spread in weeks ahead.
Updating Data on Temperature vs. Case Statistics – The
Situation Now (March 23rd)
On the other hand, we have had people recently coming to us
and saying that they’ve heard that there are more outbreaks in warm countries,
like Malaysia and Brazil recently. They ask, “doesn’t this prove the
theory wrong?” So, we wanted to take a third look at the data and see what
it says now and try to figure out what it means. Here are the results.
First off, the cold countries have moved more to the top of
the cases list. The top fifteen countries are now all cold countries, as are
twenty-two of the top twenty-five countries by case count.
On a percentage basis, today still ninety-six percent of
cases have been in cold countries with only four percent in warm countries.
Our definition of cold countries remains unchanged, with a
February temperature below fifteen degrees Celsius defining a cold country and
above fifteen degrees delineating a warm country. This is because we found the
average temperature in Okinawa in February was sixteen degrees Celsius. At this
temperature you can go out wearing shorts during the days but need a light
jacket or sweatshirt in the evening.
On the other hand, what the people have said to us is
certainly true. Some warm countries have seen outbreaks that are hard to
ignore. Brazil (1,546 cases), Australia (1,353 cases), Malaysia (1,306 cases)
are the leaders in the warm countries right now. Still this is much lower than
the leaders in cold countries, China (81,054 cases), Italy (59,138 cases), and USA
(32,783 cases).
Countries and Regions That Have Beaten The Virus
The warm countries of Singapore and Hong Kong, had initially
had high case counts, ranking number 17 and 18 for most cases as of March 8th.
Countries like these have shown that the virus can essentially be stopped.
Singapore now has the 40th most cases and Hong Kong has the 50th most cases.
But we feel that they probably beat the virus as much because they dealt very
aggressively with it as because of the warm weather there.
After all, China and Korea are cold countries and they’ve
shown that by dealing aggressively with COVID-19, they could slow or stop the
virus too. China has shown very few cases recently despite it seeming out of
control at one point. Korea, which does have a high case count, (probably influenced
by aggressive testing), has shown a very low death rate.
The Effect of Testing
What about the effect of testing? There is some thinking
that the second order things we?ve talked about are also important. For
instance, it might be possible that there is more testing in cold countries
than warm countries. We haven’t found reliable data on this for all countries,
which would be required, but it is a reasonable thing to consider. Note that we
did show a consideration for this by doing a per capita GDP analysis, below.
Cold vs. Warm Country Populations
One reader told us they thought there might be more cold
countries in the world or more people living in cold countries. We looked at
that but concluded that there are only forty-seven percent of the people living
in cold countries, whereas fifty-three percent of the people live in warm
countries. So, if anything, this should have counteracted the high percentage
of cases in cold countries.
Northern Hemisphere vs. Southern Hemisphere Populations
Another reader asked us about what will happen to the
Southern hemisphere in July and August. So, we decided to do that analysis as
well. Australia concerns us a lot because it has 1,353 cases and will be
heading into winter shortly. In Australia most of the population lives in areas
where the temperature will be below our fifteen-degree threshold in its coldest
month of July.
However, on a further analysis we found that much of the
rest of the southern hemisphere population will actually be defined as warm even
in the months of July and August. To wit, only nine southern hemisphere
countries, representing 2.7% of the world’s population will be colder than
fifteen degrees, and classified as a cold country in the month of July. July is
typically the coldest month of the year in the Southern Hemisphere. If we were
to include northern hemisphere countries that will still be below fifteen
degrees in July, such as Russia and Iceland, then we can see that 6.9 percent
of the world’s population will be cold in July.
The Effect of Per Capita GDP on Case Counts
Further thinking about “second order
considerations” we wanted to look at GDP to see if maybe the colder
countries had higher per capita GDP and this was leading to higher COVID-19
case counts. One might argue that this would have led to more travelers to the
cold countries, a situation where better healthcare exists, and a situation
where more tests have been conducted.
All of these are certainly possible and would push against
the idea that temperature itself, or some corollary of temperature is
supporting the lower case counts in warm countries.
We looked at GDP in cold and warm countries and found that
cold countries have a higher average per capita GDP. In fact, sixty-seven
percent of the world’s per capita GDP is in cold countries and thirty-three
percent is in warm countries. So, this GDP factor is certainly one that cannot
be completely ignored.
It is indeed a possibility that the virus simply spread
“first” in cold countries and it will spread in warm countries next.
Still, we feel that 96.0% of all cases being in cold
countries can’t be seen as insignificant at this point.
Conclusions
So, what does all of this mean? Does it show that the virus
only spreads in cold countries? Does it show that the summer will stop the
spread in Europe and North America? Is anything conclusive?
We think that the numbers are telling us four things
A. The spread seems to be faster in colder weather (for
whatever reason),
B. The virus can spread in warm countries but seems to
spread slower (for whatever reason),
C. The virus can be “beaten” in both warm and cold
countries with the right intervention,
D. The summer months are likely to “help” the slow
of the spread at least for a few months in Europe and North America, but it
will certainly help if Europe and North America continue to take aggressive
containment measures.
Separately we think that data is showing that countries that
test and treat coronavirus patients in separate “coronavirus only”
facilities do much better at containment. Protecting elderly in hospitals and
in retirement homes is vitally important to success. This is a topic for
another article.
Comments about our analysis are welcome at the email below.
About Azabu Insights
Azabu Insights is a boutique strategic consulting company
based in Azabu Juban, Tokyo, Japan. Our teams work collaboratively with clients
to build strategies that lead to positive change. Our multilingual team members
have top tier academic backgrounds and deep industry experience that we
leverage to provide first class, fully engaged, strategic consulting. Core
specializations include life sciences, finance, electronics, automotive,
aerospace and other industries. For more information contact:
info@azabuinsights.com.
