A Correlation based study using air quality and meteorological parameters for the outbreak of COVID-19 on major affected districts in India

Abstract Air quality is an important factor for human health conditions. Simultaneously, suitable meteorology poses the circumstances for virus transmission. Hence, we investigated both these two important aspects for the COVID-19 pandemic. We correlated the remote sensing based observations of meteorological parameters and air quality parameters with COVID-19 cases from 657 districts all over the country and found that air quality parameters are playing very crucial role along with a few meteorological parameters for this outbreak. We observed that air temperature, and wind speed were significantly and positively correlated with COVID-19 cases but precipitation and humidity were negatively correlated with confirmed cases. Cloudiness had no significant relation in this aspect. Among the air pollutants, O3 was better correlating with COVID-19 cases. AOD representing the particulate matter concentration also significantly correlated with such cases majorly over Indo-Gangetic plain region. The carbon-pollutants CO was also very high over the same region. Though NO2 and SO2 were reduced during lockdown, due to the power generation and mining activities both these gases were quite highly correlated over eastern India region. We noted the eastern and western coastal districts of India and districts from the low-lying plain areas had more cases during this pandemic. Our study suggests that improving air quality with proper strict regulations and complete lockdown during the peak of pandemic could reduce the misfortune in all over India. Hence, the summer season could be susceptible and might pose a gesture of seasonality for this disease.