Author(s)

Kshamata Muktavat¹, Vinay Kumar²

¹Department of Applied Sciences and Humanities, Inderprastha Engineering College, Ghaziabad, India.
²Department of Environmental Engineering, Texas A&M University, Kingsville, TX, USA.

Several recent works indicated the association of climatic factors and air pollution with the spread of coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19, total daily confirmed deaths and new cases). Nonetheless, the impact of climatic and environmental conditions concerning virus spread and demise, yet not been solved. Present research work focuses on the spread of COVID-19 over five distinct states/territories of India; those have pretty different climatic conditions and the air quality index. The Kendall rank correlation and Spearman rank correlation tests at 95% significance were used from 3 Jan-15 May 15, 2021 (132 days), including April 2021, a month of sharp rise COVID-19 second wave. For all the regions, a significant positive correlation of temperature (>0.6) and a significant negative correlation of humidity (<-0.5) is found with COVID-19 except for Kerala (insignificant and weak relationship). However, in the case of wind speed, a lower correlation is found everywhere except over Andhra Pradesh (>0.5). For all the states, a significant and consistent inverse relationship (<-0.3) is found between COVID-19 and the daily Air Quality Index (AQI) from 1 Mar to 13 May 2021 (74 days). Thus, increase in temperature and winds, decrease in relative humidity were the climatic reasons, those chipped in COVID-19 cases surge and consequential enhancement of Air quality. These results are quite promising to comprehend the mutual tie-up between climate and COVID-19.

Climate, Temperature, Humidity, Wind Speed, India, COVID-19

Muktavat, K. and Kumar, V. (2021) Testing Link of Climatic Factors and Air Pollution with COVID-19 amid the Second Wave in India. Journal of Environmental Protection, 12, 1069-1085. doi: 10.4236/jep.2021.1212063.