Working across the globe for environmentally-informed understanding and climate-based forecast of COVID-19

Abstract:

As COVID-19 emerged in the boreal winter of 2019-2020, one of the first questions raised by researchers, policy-makers, and the public was whether the disease would exhibit meaningful seasonality. Many upper respiratory infections do, including influenza and some prevalent coronaviruses, and hence there was reasonable expectation that COVID-19 might as well. As the disease spread, however, affecting populations from the tropical Amazon to temperate Scandinavia, it quickly became obvious that COVID-19 can inflict significant damage across a wide range of climates and environmental conditions. This wide range, however, does not exclude the possibility that SARS-CoV-2 or the disease it causes are environmentally sensitive, either in establishment phases of the epidemic or in later stages after the peak of the pandemic has passed. Rather, studies available on this topic to date show that challenges of reliable data on COVID-19 and comorbidities, confounding factors related to demographics and non-pharmaceutical interventions in response to the pandemic, and the fact that SARS-CoV-2 is a novel virus striking naïve populations across the globe, all make it difficult to detect environmental sensitivities, or to project how those sensitivities might change as the pandemic evolves. Recognizing these challenges, and recognizing also the urgent need to pool knowledge from experts working in different climate zones with ranging seasonal stages, the World Meteorological Organization and partners convened a rapid-response international virtual symposium on “Climatological, Meteorological and Environmental factors in the COVID-19 pandemic,” held on August 4^th-6^th, 2020. The symposium and its follow-on activities represent an experiment in international coordination to respond to a rapidly evolving global crisis. This presentation will engage with the contributions and challenges of the symposium and its follow-on activities and will offer perspectives on status and needs for actionable environmentally-informed forecasts of COVID-19. Lessons for future pandemics and other fast-evolving prediction challenges will be addressed.