Covid-19’s Pandemic Relationship to Saudi Arabia’s Weather Using Statistical Analysis and GIS

The eruption of the novel Covid-19 has changed the socio-economic conditions of the world.The escalating number of infections and deaths seriously threatened human health when it became a pandemic from an epidemic.It developed into an alarming situation when the World Health Organization(WHO)declared a health emergency in MARCH 2020.The geographic settings and weather conditions are systematically linked to the spread of the epidemic.The concentration of population and weather attributes remains vital to study a pandemic such as Covid-19.The current work aims to explore the relationship of the population,weather conditions(humidity and temperature)with the reported novel Covid-19 cases in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia(KSA).For the study,the data for the reported Covid-19 cases was secured from 11 March 2020,to 21 July 2020(132 days)from the 13 provinces of KSA.The Governorate level data was used to estimate the population data.A Geographic information system(GIS)analysis was utilised to visualise the relationship.The results suggested that a significant correlation existed between the population and Covid-19 cases.For the weather conditions,the data for the 13 provinces of KSA for the same period was utilised to estimate the relationship between the weather conditions and Covid-19 cases.Spearman’s rank correlation results confirmed that the humidity was significantly linked with the reported cases of Covid-19 in Makkah,Aseer,Najran,and Al Baha provinces.The temperature had a significant relation with the reported Covid-19 cases in Al-Riyad,Makkah,Al-Madinah,Aseer,Najran,and Al-Baha.The inconsistency of the results highlighted the variant behavior of Covid-19 in different regions of the KSA.More exploration is required beyond the weather-related variables.Suggestions for future research and policy direction are offered at the end of the study.