Covid-19 and vit-d: Disease mortality negatively correlates with sunlight exposure

The novel COVID-19 disease is a contagious acute respiratory infectious disease whose causative agent has been demonstrated to be a new virus of the coronavirus family, SARS-CoV-2. Alike with other coronaviruses, some studies show a COVID-19 neurotropism, inducing de-myelination lesions as encountered in Guillain-Barresyndrome. In particular, an Italian report concluded that there is a significant vitamin D deficiency in COVID-19 infected patients. In the current study, we applied a Pearson correlation test to public health as well as weather data, in order to assess the linear relationship between COVID-19 mortality rate and the sunlight exposure. For instance in continental metropolitan France, average annual sunlight hours are significantly (for a p-value of 1.532 x 10(-32)) correlated to the COVID-19 mortality rate, with a Pearson coefficient of -0.636. This correlation hints at a protective effect of sunlight exposure against COVID-19 mortality. This paper is proposed to foster academic discussion and its hypotheses and conclusions need to be confirmed by further research. (C) 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.