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

The coronavirus, COVID-19 pandemic, challenges healthcare organizations and economies worldwide. As of March 20, 2020, a total of 260,476 COVID-19 cases have been confirmed and 11,289 deaths. Transmission of COVID-19 is community-based unlike previous coronavirus outbreaks such as severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV) or the Middle East respiratory coronavirus (MERS-CoV) that were both mainly transmitted in the hospital setting 1,2 . Recent reports show that patients infected with COVID-19 are at high risk for severe morbidity (5% intensive care unit admissions) and mortality (1.4%) 3 , although highly dependent on age and prior comorbidity 4 . The reproduction number (R0), which defines the average number of cases directly generated by one case, for COVID-19 is estimated to be between 1.5-3.5 5,6 and the reproduction efficacy may be influenced by cultural habits, population density and the country specific mitigation methods such as quarantine strategies as well as travel control measures [7] [8] [9] . An additional key factor that is of specific interest world-wide and a source for controversy is the effect of the climate on COVID-19 transmission 10 .