Impact of key meteorological parameters on the spread of COVID-19 in Mumbai: Correlation and Regression Analysis
Abstract
Purpose
To understand key meteorological parameters that influence the spread of COVID-19 in Mumbai, India (based on data from April 2020 – April 2021).
Methods
The meteorological parameters chosen were Temperature, Dew Temperature, Humidity, Pressure, Wind Speed. The underlying basic relationships between meteorological parameters and COVID-19 information for Mumbai was understood using Spearman’s rank correlation coefficients. After establishing basic relationships, Linear analysis and Generalized Additive Model’s (GAM) were used to figure out statistically significant weather parameters and model them to explain the best possible variance in the pandemic data.
Results
A model of temperature and windspeed could explain 17.3% and 8.3% of variance in Daily new cases and Daily recoveries respectively. As for deaths occurring due to the virus, a model comprising of only pressure best explains a variance of 17.3% in the data. Non-Linear modelling based on GAM confirms the findings of linear analysis and establishes certain non-linear relationships as well.
Conclusion
SARS-CoV-2 belongs to the class of Human Coronaviruses (HCoV) which show seasonality depending on weather conditions. The above article focuses on understanding the underlying relationships between SARS-CoV-2 and meteorological parameters that would help progress basic research and formulation of policies around the disease for each weather/season.
Competing interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
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