The Impact of Weather on the Spread of COVID-19: The Case of the Two Largest Cities in Greece

Despoina D. Tounta (), Panagiotis T. Nastos, Dimitrios N. Paraskevis and Athanasios D. Sarantopoulos
Additional contact information
Despoina D. Tounta: Laboratory of Climatology and Atmospheric Environment, Department of Geology and Geoenvironment, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Campus, Zografou, 157 84 Athens, Greece
Panagiotis T. Nastos: Laboratory of Climatology and Atmospheric Environment, Department of Geology and Geoenvironment, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Campus, Zografou, 157 84 Athens, Greece
Dimitrios N. Paraskevis: Department of Hygiene Epidemiology and Medical Statistics, Medical School, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Mikras Asias 75 Street, Goudi, 115 27 Athens, Greece
Athanasios D. Sarantopoulos: Hellenic National Meteorological Service, El. Venizelou 14, Elliniko, 167 77 Athens, Greece

Geographies, 2025, vol. 5, issue 1, 1-20

Abstract: The new global pandemic of COVID-19, declared on 11 March 2020 by the World Health Organization, has already had an unprecedented impact on health and socioeconomic activities worldwide. The second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic swept through the United States of America and Europe in late September 2020. Compared with other southern countries, such as Greece, where there was a significant increase in cases at the end of October 2020, Northern European countries (Germany, France, Austria, Finland, and Sweden) experienced this second wave of the pandemic earlier in September 2020. To understand the epidemiological behavior of the virus from an environmental perspective, we examined the effects of air temperature, humidity, and wind on the spread of COVID-19 in two of the largest population Regional Units (R.U.) of Greece, namely the R.U. of the Central Sector of Athens in Central Greece and the R.U. of Thessaloniki in Northern Greece. We applied Pearson correlation analysis and generalized linear models (GLM) with confirmed COVID-19 Intensive Care Unit (ICU) admissions from the National Public Health Organization as dependent variables and the corresponding air temperature, humidity, and wind speed from the Greek National Meteorological Service as independent covariates. The study focused on the period from 4 May 2020 to 3 November 2020 to investigate the impact of weather on the spread of COVID-19, in a period where human activities had partially returned to normal after the gradual lifting of the restrictive measures of the first lockdown (23 March 2020). The end date of the study period was set as the date of imposition of a new local lockdown in the R.U. of Thessaloniki (3 November 2020). Our findings showed that COVID-19 ICU admissions in both Regional Units decreased significantly with the temperature (T) and wind speed (WS) increase. In the R.U. of the Central Sector of Athens, this picture is reflected in both the single and cumulative lag effects of meteorological parameters. In the R.U. of Thessaloniki, this correlation was differentiated only in terms of the cumulative lag effect of the average daily temperature, where an increase (+17.6%) in daily confirmed COVID-19 ICU admissions was observed. On the other hand, relative humidity (RH) was significantly associated with an increase in cases in both R.U. This study, in addition to its contribution to the global research effort to understand the effects of weather on the spread of COVID-19, aims to highlight the need to integrate meteorological parameters as predictive factors in surveillance and early warning systems for infectious diseases. The combination of weather and climate factors (e.g., humidity, temperature, wind) and other contagious disease surveillance indicators (e.g., wastewater, geographic and population data, human activities) would make the early identification of potential epidemic risks more effective and would contribute to the immediate initiation of public health interventions and the more rational allocation of resources.

Keywords: COVID-19 pandemic; meteorological conditions; generalized linear models; Greece (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q1 Q15 Q5 Q53 Q54 Q56 Q57 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2673-7086/5/1/5/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2673-7086/5/1/5/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jgeogr:v:5:y:2025:i:1:p:5-:d:1582599

Access Statistics for this article

Geographies is currently edited by Ms. Fannie Xu

More articles in Geographies from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().