The absence of population-wide testing for COVID-19 makes it difficult to investigate the growth dynamics of COVID-19 infection. The case data include a selection bias due to surveillance focusing mainly on symptomatic persons. In particular, the availability of a reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test to identify COVID-19 cases, e.g. the number of PCR tests conducted per population, varies greatly among countries with different medical/public-health conditions (https://ourworldindata.org/covid-testing). Therefore, the true number of the COVID-19 patients and the dynamics of the disease spread are obscured behind the prevalence of asymptomatic carriers [23, 24]. Nevertheless, our findings demonstrate that the COVID-19 pandemic is deterministically driven by climate suitability, cross-border human mobility, and region-specific COVID-19 susceptibility. The present results, based on mapping the spread of COVID-19 and identifying multiple drivers of the outbreak trajectory, contribute to a better understanding of the disease transmission risk and may inform the application of appropriate preventative measures against this pandemic.