Scientific Reports (Oct 2023)

Association of atmospheric temperature with out-of-hospital natural deaths occurrence before and during the COVID-19 pandemic in Osaka, Japan

  • Hidenori Yoshizawa,
  • Satoshi Hattori,
  • Ken-ichi Yoshida,
  • Hideyuki Maeda,
  • Tetsuhisa Kitamura,
  • Eiichi Morii

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-45816-7
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 13, no. 1
pp. 1 – 10

Abstract

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Abstract In this study, we aimed to investigate the relationship between out-of-hospital natural death (OHND) and ambient temperature and examine the seriousness of the impact of the coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19) pandemic on this relationship. We used data from the Osaka Prefectural Office of Medical Examiners between 2018 and 2022 and performed a retrospective observational study. A Poisson regression model was applied to examine the relationship between OHND and temperature in Osaka City. The relative risk of OHND at 5 °C and 32 °C compared to the minimum mortality temperature increased from 1.81 in the pre-COVID-19 period to 2.03 in the post-COVID-19 period at 5 °C and from 1.29 in the pre-COVID-19 period to 1.60 in the post-COVID-19 period at 32 °C. The increase in relative risk per 1 °C increase from the pre- to post-COVID-19 period was 1.0551 (rate ratio [RR], p = 0.003) in the hot environment and 1.0233 (RR, p = 0.013) in the cold environment, which was larger than that in the hot environment. Although the risk of OHND increased at both temperatures, the change in OHND risk during post-COVID-19 was larger in the hot environment than in the cold environment, implicating the effect of pandemics in the current scenario of global warming.