Impact of climatic parameters on COVID-19 pandemic progression in India: analysis and prediction

Deyal, N.; Tiwari, V.; Bisht, N.

COVID-19 is spreading rapidly worldwide and various factors of it have to be analysed. We analyze the effect of climatic parameters (Average Temperature (AT), Atmospheric Pressure (AP), Relative Humidity (RH), Solar Radiation (SR) and Wind Speed (WS)) on the COVID-19 epidemic during 25 March 2020 to 15 June 2020 in most affected states of India i.e. Maharashtra, Delhi and Tamilnadu. We quantitatively establish the correlation between these parameters by using Kendall & Spearman rank correlation test. The results indicate that the positive cases are highly correlated with the AT (r^2 >0.6,p<0.001) in Delhi where as a moderate correlation ( r^2<0.6,p<0.001) has been estimated for Maharashtra and Tamilnadu. Similarly, an intermediate range of correlation coefficient has been observed for other climatic parameters. The range of climatic parameters have been found corresponding to maximum number of cases results as AT (25~40 0 C), RH (40~70%), AT (740~965 mmHg), SR (200-250 W/mt2) and WS (.5~14 m/sec). Time series analysis depicts that the positive cases and mortality are increasing rapidly. COVID-19 epidemic peak is predicted and would be appearing October 2020 using SIR model for capital of India (New Delhi). The outcomes of this study will be helpful for the containment of COVID-19 worldwide.