Relationship between Climatic Variables and Reproduction Number (R0) of Confirmed COVID-19 Cases

Abstract

Most transmittable diseases appear in a specific season and the effect of climate on COVID-19 is of special interest. This study aimed to investigate the relationship between climatic variables and R0 of COVID-19 cases in one hundred areas around the world. The daily confirmed cases COVID-19 and climatic data of each area per day from January 2020 to March 2021 are utilized in the study. The GWR and MLR methods were used to identify the relationship between R0 of COVID-19 cases and climatic variables. The MLR results showed a significant (p-value < 0.05) weak inverse relationship between R0 of COVID-19 cases and wind speed, but a positive significant (p-value < 0.01) relationship with precipitation. It implies that lower COVID-19 cases were recorded with high wind speed and low precipitations. Based on GWR, R0 of COVID-19 infection against principal climatic variables has found statistically significant using Monte Carlo p-value test and the effect of climatic variables on COVID-19 infection appears to vary geographically. However, besides climatic variables, many socio-economic factors could influence the virus transmission and will be considered in future studies.