Assessing temporal correlation in environmental risk factors to design efficient area-specific COVID-19 regulations: Delhi based case study

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.