Abstract: Since January 2020 Elsevier has created a COVID-19 resource centre with free information in English and Mandarin on the novel coronavirus COVID19. The COVID-19 resource centre is hosted on Elsevier Connect, the company's public news and information website. Elsevier hereby grants permission to make all its COVID-19-related research that is available on the COVID-19 resource centre - including this research content - immediately available in PubMed Central and other publicly funded repositories, such as the WHO COVID database with rights for unrestricted research re-use and analyses in any form or by any means with acknowledgement of the original source. These permissions are granted for free by Elsevier for as long as the COVID-19 resource centre remains active. Spatial and Spatio-temporal Epidemiology 35 (2020) 100362 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Spatial and Spatio-temporal Epidemiology journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/sste Covid-19 and vit-d: Disease mortality negatively correlates with sunlight exposure Édouard Lansiaux a,∗, Philippe P. Pébaÿ b, Jean-Laurent Picard c, Joachim Forget d a Henry Warembourg School of Medicine, Lille University, 59000, Lille, France NexGen Analytics, Sheridan, WY, 82801, U.S.A. c Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers, 75141, Paris, France d Assemblée Nationale, 75355, Paris, France b a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t Article history: Received 19 June 2020 Accepted 20 July 2020 Available online 23 July 2020 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-Barré syndrome. Keywords: COVID-19 Coronavirus France Correlation Vitamin D Phototherapy UV 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 × 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. © 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. La nouvelle infection au COVID-19 est une maladie respiratoire infectieuse sévère dont l’agent causal a été identifié comme un nouveau virus de la famille des coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2. Comme les autres coronavirus, des études montrent un neurotropisme du COVID-19, induisant des lésions démyélinisantes comme dans le syndrome de Guillain-Barré. Plus particulièrement, une note italienne conclue qu’il y a un déficit significatif en vitamine D chez les patients infectés par le COVID-19. Dans cette étude, nous avons utilisé un test de corrélation de Pearson sur des données de santé publique et météorologiques, dans le but de statuer sur une possible relation entre l’ensoleillement et la mortalité induite par le COVID-19. Pa exemple dans la France métropolitaine continentale, la..