Correlation between weather and COVID‐19 pandemic in India: An empirical investigation

Sharma, Prayas; Singh, Ashish Kumar; Agrawal, Bharti; Sharma, Anukriti

This study is an attempt to find and analyze the correlation between Covid‐19 pandemic and weather conditions in Indian context. Secondary data analysis of surveillance data of COVID‐19 is taken from Wikipedia (updating information from World Health Organization) & statista.com and weather data through Power Data Access Viewer (DAV) (power.Iarc.nasa.gov) from NASA after mentioning latitude and longitude of India. The minimum temperature (°C) at 2 metre, maximum temperature (°C) at 2 metre, temperature (°C) at 2 metre and relative humidity (%) are taken as component of weather. To find the association, Spearman's rank correlation test was applied. The minimum, maximum temperature (°C) at 2 m, temperatures (°C) at 2 m and humidity at 2 m are significantly correlated with COVID‐19 pandemic cases (r = 0.93, 0.94, 0.83, and 0.30) at 99% two‐tailed significance level. The findings serve as an initial evidence to reduce the incidence rate of COVID‐19 in India and useful in policy making.