Summary

Coronavirus (COVID-19) global pandemic was first identified in Wuhan, China in December 2019. Its human-to-human transmission was confirmed on January 20, 2020 and rapidly escalated into a global pandemic.

Coronavirus exponential spread has caused overwhelming challenges to global public health and left households and businesses counting huge economic losses.

These unprecedented global circumstances have forced policymakers to work under bilevel pressure: implement successful containment strategies and in the meantime get society and the economy to a new normal path—in other words, a trade-off between successful containment strategy and optimal reopening strategy.

As the pandemic evolves, a growing public and academic debate has taken place on the likelihood of the influence of meteorological factors as well as pollution elements on COVID-19 cycle. This potential association between meteorological factors and COVID-19 spread inevitably shapes containment strategies and social and economic reopening policy options.

An important growing literature has investigated this relationship using various statistical tools and approaches. Indeed, several researchers have attempted to provide evidence of statistical correlation between meteorological conditions as well as and air pollution factors and COVID-19 reported deaths?

Several studies have analyzed the association between meteorological factors and the spread of COVID-19 in local, regional, and global frameworks. A particular focus has been made on the identification of factors that might have impact on COVID-19 mortality rate as well as on the acceleration of diffusion of infection, for various countries including China.