Assessing temporal correlation in environmental risk factors to design efficient area-specific COVID-19 regulations: Delhi based case study
Issued Date
2022-12-01
Resource Type
eISSN
20452322
Scopus ID
2-s2.0-85135160281
Pubmed ID
35902653
Journal Title
Scientific Reports
Volume
12
Issue
1
Rights Holder(s)
SCOPUS
Bibliographic Citation
Scientific Reports Vol.12 No.1 (2022)
Suggested Citation
Chaudhary V., Bhadola P., Kaushik A., Khalid M., Furukawa H., Khosla A. Assessing temporal correlation in environmental risk factors to design efficient area-specific COVID-19 regulations: Delhi based case study. Scientific Reports Vol.12 No.1 (2022). doi:10.1038/s41598-022-16781-4 Retrieved from: https://repository.li.mahidol.ac.th/handle/123456789/86404
Title
Assessing temporal correlation in environmental risk factors to design efficient area-specific COVID-19 regulations: Delhi based case study
Other Contributor(s)
Abstract
Amid ongoing devastation due to Serve-Acute-Respiratory-Coronavirus2 (SARS-CoV-2), the global spatial and temporal variation in the pandemic spread has strongly anticipated the requirement of designing area-specific preventive strategies based on geographic and meteorological state-of-affairs. Epidemiological and regression models have strongly projected particulate matter (PM) as leading environmental-risk factor for the COVID-19 outbreak. Understanding the role of secondary environmental-factors like ammonia (NH3) and relative humidity (RH), latency of missing data structuring, monotonous correlation remains obstacles to scheme conclusive outcomes. We mapped hotspots of airborne PM2.5, PM10, NH3, and RH concentrations, and COVID-19 cases and mortalities for January, 2021-July,2021 from combined data of 17 ground-monitoring stations across Delhi. Spearmen and Pearson coefficient correlation show strong association (p-value < 0.001) of COVID-19 cases and mortalities with PM2.5 (r > 0.60) and PM10 (r > 0.40), respectively. Interestingly, the COVID-19 spread shows significant dependence on RH (r > 0.5) and NH3 (r = 0.4), anticipating their potential role in SARS-CoV-2 outbreak. We found systematic lockdown as a successful measure in combatting SARS-CoV-2 outbreak. These outcomes strongly demonstrate regional and temporal differences in COVID-19 severity with environmental-risk factors. The study lays the groundwork for designing and implementing regulatory strategies, and proper urban and transportation planning based on area-specific environmental conditions to control future infectious public health emergencies.