Climate effect on COVID-19 spread rate: an online surveillance tool

Gil Caspi; Uri Shalit; Soren Lund Kristensen; Doron Aronson; Lilac Caspi; Oran Rossenberg; Avi Shina; Oren Caspi

Given the variant vulnerability of different strains of coronavirus to climate, specifically temperature, there is a major global uncertainty regarding the continuing spread of COVID-19 during the coming months. Currently, the World Health Organization assumption is that COVID-19 spread will not be ameliorated during the summer period 17 . A surveillance tool assessing the correlation between the spread rate of COVID-19 and climate variables will be instrumental for societies, governments and health organizations worldwide. Analyzing the interaction between disease spread rate and climate may allow implementation of differential and precise mitigation measures for disease spread prevention, to tune healthcare routine ambulatory services and preparation strategies and to minimize the unnecessary dreadful impact of excessive quarantine strategies on psychosocial health and economies. Online dashboards have proven useful for global COVID-19 tracking. We have two aims in the current study. First, to compare the distinctive transmission efficacy of COVID-19 in countries with cold and warm climate based on the initial disease diagnosis trends worldwide. We consider this to be a cautious test case for examining the correlation between climate and COVID-19 disease spread. The second and more important aim, is to create an online up-to-date surveillance tool simultaneously presenting COVID-19 spread rate with relation to climate parameters.