Table 2

The lag = 7 simple correlation coefficient between the number of SARS patients and weather variable: maximum temperature (T_{max_7}), mean temperature (T_{m_7}), minimum temperature (T_{min_7}), relative humidity (RH_{_7}), and local station barometric pressure (P_{_7})

Meteorological variable	Correlation coefficient
Meteorological variable	Hong Kong	Guangzhou	Beijing	Taiyuan
p<0.05;p<0.01;**p<0.001; NS, no significance.
T_{max_7}	−0.453***	−0.438***	+0.528***	+0.310**
T_{m_7}	−0.428***	−0.301***	+0.526***	+0.278*
T_{min_7}	−0.425***	−0.193*	+0.475***	+0.214(NS)
RH_{_7}	+0.067(NS)	−0.271***	−0.448***	−0.321**
P_{_7}	+0.364***	−0.361***	−0.513***	−0.488***