Global Evidence of Temperature Acclimation of COVID-19 D614G Linage

The novel D614G linage is becoming the dominating species of SARS-CoV-2. The impact of meteorological and geographical factors on SARS-CoV-2 pandemic are presently not well understood. This research article presents a retrospective case series. Pandemic and meteorological data from 30 countries and 49 states from USA are collected as of June 10th, 2020. The primary outcome are the coefficients of correlations between meteorological factors and pandemic data. Hierarchical clustering analysis are used on SARS-CoV-2 genome, meteorological factors, and pandemic. Disseminating velocity of SARS-CoV-2 is negatively correlated with average temperature in majority of included countries and states from USA. Proportion of the GR clade is positively associated with temperature, but is negatively correlated with altitude in countries-set. Virus disseminating velocities in states from cluster A (Overwhelming proportion of G + GR + GH clades, GH > 60%) and C (Overwhelming proportion of G + GR + GH clades, G 20-30%) both has negative correlations with temperature, while cluster C has more significant negative correlation than cluster A. Climate and geographical environment are revealed to affect virus spreading. GH and GR clades of SARS-CoV-2 are probably acquiring higher temperature tolerance, while G clade may retain high temperature intolerance.