  The 2019 coronavirus disease (COVID-19), emerged late December 2019 in China,
is now rapidly spreading across the globe. At the time of writing this paper,
the number of global confirmed cases has passed two millions and half with over
180,000 fatalities. Many countries have enforced strict social distancing
policies to contain the spread of the virus. This have changed the daily life
of tens of millions of people, and urged people to turn their discussions
online, e.g., via online social media sites like Twitter. In this work, we
describe the first Arabic tweets dataset on COVID-19 that we have been
collecting since January 1st, 2020. The dataset would help researchers and
policy makers in studying different societal issues related to the pandemic.
Many other tasks related to behavioral change, information sharing,
misinformation and rumors spreading can also be analyzed.
