Impact of environmental temperature on Covid-19 spread: Model and analysis of measurements recorded during the second pandemic in Cyprus

The paper investigates the effect of the environmental temperature on the spread of COVID-19. We study the daily numbers of the cases infected and deaths caused by Covid-19 during the second wave of the pandemic within 2020, and how they were affected by the daily average-high temperature for the districts of the Republic of Cyprus. Among the findings of the paper, we show that (i) the average ratio of the PCR to rapid positive tests is [~]2.57{+/-}0.25, as expected from the tests responses, indicating that PCR overestimates positivity by [~]2.5 times; (ii) the average age of deaths caused by Covid-19 increases with rate about a year of age per week; (iii) the probability of a person infected by Covid-19 to develop severe symptoms leading to death is strongly depended on the persons age, while the probability of having a death on the age of [~]67 or younger is less than 1/1000; (iv) the number of infected cases and deaths declined dramatically when the environmental temperature reaches and/or climbs above the critical temperature of TC=30.1{+/-}2.4 C0; (v) the observed negative correlation between the exponential growth rate of the infected cases and the environmental temperature can be described within the framework of chemical kinetics, with at least two competing reactions, the connection of the coronavirus towards the receptor and the dissolution of the coronavirus; the estimated activation energy difference corresponding to the competing chemical reactions, 0.212{+/-}0.25 eV, matches the known experimental value; and (vi) the infected cases will decline to zero, when the environmental temperature climbs above the critical temperature within the summery days of 2021, which is expected for the Republic of Cyprus by the 16th of May, 2021.