Impact of climatic parameters on COVID-19 pandemic in India: analysis and prediction

The COVID-19 is spreading very fast globally and various factors of it have to be analysed. The aim of this study is to analyze the effect of climatic parameters (Average Temperature (AT), Atmospheric Pressure (AP), Relative Humidity (RH), Solar Radiation (SR) and Wind Speed (WS)) on the COVID-19 epidemic during 25 March 2020 to 15 June 2020 in most affected states of India i.e. Maharashtra, Delhi and Tamilnadu. We quantitatively establish the correlation between these parameters by using Kendall & Spearman rank correlation test. The results indicate that the numbers of cases are highly correlated with the AT (r ² > 0.6, p < 0.001) in Delhi where as a moderate correlation (r ² > 0.6, p < 0.001) has been estimated for Maharashtra and Tamilnadu. Similarly, an intermediate range of correlation coefficient has been observed for other climatic parameters. A comparative study of climatic parameters in the current COVID-19 period with previous two years (2018-2019) has been carried out. Corresponding results imply a substantial trend for all three states. The range of climatic parameters have been found corresponding to maximum number of cases results as AT (25∼ 40 ° C), RH (40∼70%), AT (740∼965 mmHg), SR (200-250 W/mt ² ) and WS (.5∼14 m/sec). Time series analysis depicts that the number of cases and mortality are increasing rapidly. COVID-19 epidemic peak has been predicted by SIR model for capital of India (New Delhi) and it would be around October 2020. The outcomes of this study will be helpful for the containment of COVID- 19 not only in India but globally.