Impact of Weather on COVID-19 in Metropolitan Cities of Pakistan: A data-driven approach

Abstract

The world has been drastically affected by the 2019 novel corona-virus outbreak, otherwise known as COVID-19. Pakistan is no exception to this, and the virus has rapidly spread within the country in the first quarter of 2020. As previously some of the contagious diseases such as influenza have been affected by various meteorological factors therefore, several recent studies have been done in various parts of the world to find the climatic impact on COVID-19 as well. This study also, analyzes the effect of meteorological factors on the proliferation of COVID-19 in Pakistani urban centers, namely, Islamabad, Karachi, Lahore, and Peshawar. The variables observed for this purpose are the number of confirmed cases, fatalities, recoveries, and transmission type. Finally, we also forecast the trend of COVID-19 in the coming days, using a time series model named as Facebook’s Prophet Library.