We identify five important national cultural dimensions - power distance, uncertainty avoidance, humane orientation, in-group collectivism, and cultural tightness - that may influence the speed of COVID-19 spread and empirically test our hypotheses in three studies. Study 1 investigates how power distance and uncertainty avoidance relate to the speed of the virus spread using a sample of 60 countries. The results suggest that small power distance and strong uncertainty avoidance are related to faster disease spread at the beginning of the pandemic. Using a sample of 55 countries, Study 2 adopts the national cultural dimensions from House et al.'s (2004) GLOBE study and supports the findings of Study 1. Moreover, Study 2 reveals that countries with low humane orientation and high in-group collectivism report a faster spread of the coronavirus. Study 3 focuses on cultural tightness-looseness and shows that the speed of coronavirus spread is slower in countries with high cultural tightness