Coronavirus pandemic versus temperature in the context of Indian subcontinent: a preliminary statistical analysis

Abstract

The novel coronavirus (COVID-19) has unleashed havoc across different countries and was declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization. Since certain evidences indicate a direct relationship of various viruses with the weather (temperature in particular), the same is being speculated about COVID-19; however, it is still under investigation as the pandemic is advancing the world over. In this study, we tried to analyze the spread of COVID-19 in the Indian subcontinent with respect to the local temperature regimes from March 9, 2020, to May 27, 2020. To establish the relation between COVID-19 and temperature in India, three different ecogeographical regions having significant temperature differences were taken into consideration for the analysis. We observed that except Maharashtra, Rajasthan and Kashmir showed a significantly positive correlation between the number of COVID-19 cases and the temperature during the period of study. The evidences based on the results presented in this research lead us to believe that the increasing temperature is beneficial to the COVID-19 spread, and the cases are going to rise further with the increasing temperature over India. We, therefore, conclude that the existing data, though limited, suggest that the spread of COVID-19 in India is not explained by the variation of temperature alone and is most likely driven by a host of other factors related to epidemiology, socioeconomics and other climatic factors. Based on the results, it is suggested that temperature should not be considered as a yardstick for planning intervention strategies for controlling the COVID-19 pandemic.

Weather Variability and COVID-19 Transmission: A Review of Recent Research

“…Four studies from China were included, two at the city level [ 36 , 37 ] and two at the provincial level [ 38 , 39 ], two studies were based in South America—one including multiple countries [ 40 ] the second focusing on Brazil [ 41 ]. The remaining studies included New South Wales, Australia [ 42 ]; a study of countries in Africa [ 43 ]; Saudi Arabia [ 44 ]; two studies of states in India [ 45 , 46 ]; two studies from Spain [ 47 , 48 ] and three studies at city level including Jakarta, Indonesia [ 49 ]; Singapore [ 50 ]; and Oslo, Norway [ 51 ] ( Figure 3 ). The incidence data included in these studies are categorized from country level to city level, the majority of cases globally were recorded in urban or metropolitan areas—particularly at the beginning of the pandemic, isolated rural and regional areas were less affected in the initial outbreak period and are less likely to be included in the data analyzed.…”

“…In the study from India, for the period 1 April–10 May, the effect of temperature varied across the 11 states, an association with COVID-19 incidence and average temperature was reported as significant in four of the included states—Madhya Pradesh ( r = 1.43, p ≤ 0.05), Maharashtra ( r = 2.76, p ≤ 0.05), Punjab ( r = 1.49, p ≤ 0.05), and Tamil Nadu ( r = −15.9, p ≤ 0.05); maximum temperature was reported as significant in association with COVID-19 incidence in two regions—Maharashtra ( r = −0.32, p < 0.05) and Tamil Nadu ( r = 0.43, p ≤ 0.05), and minimum temperature was reported as significant in association with COVID-19 incidence in two regions—Gujrat ( r = 0.21, p < 0.05) and Uttar Pradesh ( r = 0.18, p < 0.05) [ 45 ]. In another study from India, in the three regions of Maharashtra, Rajasthan and Kashmir, Meraj et al reported significant positive association in two of the three regions analyzed; no significant association between temperature and COVID-19 incidence was reported for Maharashtra ( r = 0.093); in Rajasthan and Kashmir, a positive association between temperature and COVID-19 was reported ( r = 0.76, p ≤ 0.0001) and ( r = 0.76, p ≤ 0.0001) respectively [ 46 ]. In Alkhowailed et al, a significant correlation was reported in Saudi Arabia, for both average temperature (−0.162, p < 0.05) and maximum temperature ( r = −0.211, p < 0.01) and daily new cases [ 44 ].…”

“…Since May, as autumn and winter began in the southern hemisphere, cases have increased significantly, particularly in India and South America. The studies included reported significant association with temperature and humidity in these regions [ 40 , 41 , 45 , 46 ].…”

A conceptual IoT-based early-warning architecture for remote monitoring of COVID-19 patients in wards and at home

“…It is important to note that any policies to monitor individuals must address privacy concerns (as expanded in the paragraphs below) and consider the characteristics of pandemics. For example, environmental parameters such as temperature and weather might play a pivotal role in the transmission of COVID-19, in addition to socioeconomic characteristics of a region [34] . Government policies and mandates that focus on IoT-HMS implementation can examine these and other factors that govern the COVID-19 pandemic and plan accordingly.…”

Association between climatic variables and COVID-19 pandemic in National Capital Territory of Delhi, India

“…Apart from the above, several researchers have focused on COVID-19 pandemic in relation to climatic variables in India (Das et al 2020 ; Dimri et al 2020 ; Ghosh et al 2020 ; Gupta and Pradhan 2020 ; Gupta et al 2020a , b ; Meraj et al 2020 ; Roy 2020 ; Vinoj et al 2020 ). However, most of the studies have used short period of data and provided the association of COVID-19 with two variables, i.e., temperature and humidity.…”