A risk analysis of COVID‐19 infections in Kolkata Metropolitan City: A GIS based study

Nath, Bibhash; Majumder, Santanu; Sen, Jayanta; Rahman, Mohammad Mahmudur

The COVID‐19 pandemic has affected daily lives of people around the world. People have already started to live wearing masks, keeping a safe distance from others and maintaining a high level of hygiene. This paper deals with an in‐depth analysis of riskness associated with COVID‐19 infections in Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) at the sub‐city (ward) level. Attempts have been made to identify the areas with high or low risk of infections using GIS‐based geostatistical approach. Cosine Similarity Index has been used to rank different wards of KMC according to the degree of riskness. Four indices were computed to address intervention objectives and to determine ‘Optimized Prevention Rank’ of wards for future policy decisions. The highest risk areas were located in the eastern and western part of the city, to a great extent overlapped with wards containing larger share of population living in slums and/or below poverty level. While, highly infected areas lie in central Kolkata and in several wards at the eastern and northeastern periphery of the KMC. The ‘Optimized Prevention Rank’ have indicated that the lack of social awareness along with lack of social distancing and high susceptibility have contributed to the increasing number of containments of COVID‐19 cases. The rankings of the wards would no doubt provide the policy makers a basis to control further spread of the disease or delay a second wave. Since effective antiviral drugs are far away, the application of our approach would save the lives of many people, especially the poor and underprivileged.