Could Ramadan Catalyze or Inhibit SARS-CoV-2 Spread? Preliminary Results

Abstract

Around 1.8 billion Muslims worldwide celebrate in some extent the holy month of Ramadan during COVID-19 pandemic. Some increase their attendance worship sites and traditional dining in extended families, so infectious contact rates could increase. Moreover, fasting could increase the probability of acquiring SARS-CoV-2 infection. There are mitigation measures (e.g. Healthy Ramadan by WHO) applied to reduce the SARS-CoV-2 spread, however their real impact is still unknown. Multiple studies assessed observed effects of contact rates increase during holidays as Chinese New Year in January and Passover and Easter in April and their short-time effects on COVID-19 transmission dynamics. However, there are any quantitative attempts considering epidemiological consequences of the holy Ramadan (at least up to our knowledge and keywords search in various databases until the submission day). We analyze the fractions of Muslims and time series of COVID-19 daily incidence and cases numbers for 197 countries and territories. We found statistically significant positive link with proportion of Islam adherents with increase in normalized new cases of COVID-19 during 1-18 May 2020. Moreover, growth of incidences in May is statistically significantly greater than in a control (April).