6. Assessing the relationship between the Excess Cold Factor and the proportion of people with infectious, cardiovascular, and respiratory diseases in Bac Ninh province

Abstract

This study analyzed the impact of meteorological factors and cold-wave events on health, specifically infectious, cardiovascular, and respiratory diseases, by computing and analyzing the cold-wave index ECF and assessing its relationship with these disease groups during 2022 - 2024 in Bac Ninh province. Data analysis reveals that ECF_mean plays a predictive role in public health, particularly for respiratory diseases (r = -0.68) and infectious diseases (r = -0.54). When ECF_mean is high, case counts decline markedly; Conversely, when ECF_mean is low and cold spells are prolonged, case counts rise sharply, especially for respiratory and infectious groups. The cardiovascular disease group shows a weak correlation (r = -0.24), indicating the need to incorporate additional factors such as EHF, age, and underlying comorbidities. The ECF index is a useful metric that can explain/predict much of the increase in cases during deep or prolonged cold events, but it cannot be used alone to definitively establish causation without multivariate (multi-factor) analysis.