Modeling the Impact of Climate Factors on COVID-19 Transmission in Nigeria

Abstract

Due to spatial and temporal changes in climate, the incidences of COVID-19 is much more higher in some parts of America, Europe and Asia by comparing with Saharan and sub-Saharan Africa. Several studies show the link between climate factors (e.g., temperature rainfall and humidity) and COVID-19 occurrence will be used to aid intervention planning, prevention and control policies. Nigeria is a country that is sensitive to spatial and temporal variability in the occurrence of climate factors, and fully knowing it link with COVID-19 is crucial towards mitigation. In this study, we examined the link by firstly deployed convenience sampling to select three cities (Abuja, Kano and Lagos) where the international airports of Nigeria are situated and also the index case of the country came through Lagos. Secondly, we used the reported cases of COVID-19 from its onset in the country (22/02/2020) up to 21/05/2021. Thirdly, lagged regression was used to explore the link between weekly counts of COVID-19 cases and weekly recorded average of the climate data; including the google trend index as a measure of the populace health seeking behaviour. We found a significant influence of temperature, humidity and heath seeking trend, with a very negligible contributions of precipitation to the occurrence of the COVID-19 in the states investigated. This result will assist policy makers with a prior knowledge to plan for non-pharmaceutical interventions in anticipation of possible outbreak.