Ebrahim Sahafizadeh

Background: COVID-19 was first reported in Iran on February 19, 2020. Bushehr, one of the warmest provinces of Iran, was the last province confirmed to be infected on March 5, 2020. In the beginning of April, Bushehr was announced as a ‘white’, coronavirus-free, province. However, increasing the temperature in the next months did not affect the spread of coronavirus and the number of confirmed cases increased during the next months, so that Bushehr was announced as a ‘red’ province on June 13, 2020. Methods: This paper aims 1) to estimate the reproduction number of COVID-19 in Bushehr considering COVID-19 reported cases of Bushehr from April to June 12, 2020, using exponential function and SIR epidemic model, and 2) to investigate the impact of temperature on the reproduction number and the spread of coronavirus in Bushehr using the temperature data. Results: The reproduction number was estimated to be 2.564, 2.641 and 2.573 at the beginning of April, May and June 2020 respectively. Regarding the increase in the temperature from April to June, the results showed that not only was the spread of COVID-19 not reduced but it also increased. Conclusion: Data analysis on this study showed that high temperature has no impact on the reproduction number and does not slow down the spread of coronavirus in Bushehr.