Impact of climate indicators on the COVID-19 pandemic in Saudi Arabia

Abstract

The novel coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak has left a major impact on daily lifestyle and human activities. Many recent studies confrmed that the COVID-19 pandemic has human-to-human transmissibility. Additional studies claimed that other factors afect the viability, transmissibility, and propagation range of COVID-19. The efect of weather factors on the spread of COVID-19 has gained much attention among researchers. The current study investigates the relationship between climate indicators and daily detected COVID-19 cases in Saudi Arabia, focusing on the top fve cities with confrmed cases. The examined climate indicators were temperature (°F), dew point (°F), humidity (%), wind speed (mph), and pressure (Hg). Using data from Spring 2020 and 2021, we conducted spatio-temporal correlation, regression, and time series analyses. The results provide preliminary evidence that the COVID-19 pandemic spread in most of the considered cities is signifcantly correlated with temperature (positive correlation) and pressure (negative correlation). The discrepancies in the results from diferent cites addressed in this study suggest that non-meteorological factors need to be explored in conjunction with weather attributes in a sufciently long-term analysis to provide meaningful policy measures for the future.