Industrial and Systems Engineering Department, King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals, 5063, Dhahran, 31261, Saudi Arabia.
IRC of Smart Mobility and Logistics, King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals, Dhahran, 31261, Saudi Arabia.
Environ Sci Pollut Res Int. 2022 Mar;29(14):20449-20462. doi: 10.1007/s11356-021-17305-9. Epub 2021 Nov 4.
The novel coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak has left a major impact on daily lifestyle and human activities. Many recent studies confirmed that the COVID-19 pandemic has human-to-human transmissibility. Additional studies claimed that other factors affect the viability, transmissibility, and propagation range of COVID-19. The effect 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 five cities with confirmed 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 significantly correlated with temperature (positive correlation) and pressure (negative correlation). The discrepancies in the results from different cites addressed in this study suggest that non-meteorological factors need to be explored in conjunction with weather attributes in a sufficiently long-term analysis to provide meaningful policy measures for the future.
新型冠状病毒（COVID-19）爆发对日常生活和人类活动产生了重大影响。许多最近的研究证实，COVID-19 具有人际传播能力。其他研究声称，其他因素会影响 COVID-19 的生存能力、传染性和传播范围。天气因素对 COVID-19 传播的影响引起了研究人员的广泛关注。本研究调查了沙特阿拉伯气候指标与每日检测到的 COVID-19 病例之间的关系，重点关注确诊病例最多的五个城市。检查的气候指标包括温度（华氏度）、露点（华氏度）、湿度（%）、风速（英里/小时）和压力（汞）。使用 2020 年春季和 2021 年的数据，我们进行了时空相关、回归和时间序列分析。结果初步表明，在考虑的大多数城市中，COVID-19 疫情的传播与温度（正相关）和压力（负相关）显著相关。本研究中不同城市的结果差异表明，需要在足够长的时间内结合天气属性来探讨非气象因素，以便为未来提供有意义的政策措施。
