Systematic review of the effects of environmental factors on virus inactivation: implications for coronavirus disease 2019

Abstract

Environmental factors such as temperature and relative humidity can affect the inactivation and transmission of coronaviruses. By reviewing medical experiments on virus survival and virus transmission between infected and susceptible species in different temperature and humidity conditions, this study explores the influence of temperature and relative humidity on the survival and transmission of viruses, and provides suggestions, with experimental evidence, for the environmental control measures of Coronavirus Disease 2019. The results indicated that (1) virus viability and infectivity is increased at a low temperature of 5\xa0℃ and reduced at higher temperatures. (2) Virus survival and transmission is highly efficient in a dry environment with low relative humidity, and also in a wet environment with high relative humidity, and it is minimal at intermediate relative humidity. Therefore, in indoor environments, the lack of heating in winter or overventilation, leading to low indoor temperature, can help virus survival and help susceptible people being infected. On the contrary, modulating the indoor relative humidity at an intermediate level is conducive to curb epidemic outbreaks.