An Assessment of Relation of Environmental Parameters and COVID-19
transmission at the early stage during March-May 2020 in India
Abstract
The Corona virus disease 2019 (COVID-19) mainly caused by the novel
severe acute respiratory syndrome corona virus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) became a
global pandemic by March 2020. Actual there is no strong evidence of
weather and COVD-19 spread relation as it is a new virus. This study is
mainly focussed on the tropical weather impact on the spatio-temporal
spread of COVID-19 during the early stages i.e. March-May 2020 in India,
which is a large country where the disease has shown an exponential
growth. This study is an attempt to assess the relationship of major
environmental parameters like solar radiation, air temperature and
humidity with the positive cases of COVID-19 for the period March-May
2020 which is the summer season or pre-monsoon season over India. The
time series and significant correlation analysis at daily, weekly scale
and the spatial analysis of weather and COVID-19 cases are presented.
The results show significant correlation of solar radiation and
atmospheric temperature with COVID-19 cases both at daily and weekly
scale in India whereas humidity has low correlation in the study period.
But the temperature humidity index (THI) a measure of the thermal stress
shows positive correlation with the disease spread. These results can be
a good input for developing the integrated modelling framework for the
COVID-19 forecasting using state of art numerical weather prediction
model and disease process modelling.