Correlation between weather and COVID‐19 pandemic in India: An empirical investigation

• Published date: 01 November 2020
• Author: Prayas Sharma,Ashish Kumar Singh,Bharti Agrawal,Anukriti Sharma
• Date: 01 November 2020
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/pa.2222

ACADEMIC PAPER

Correlation between weather and COVID-19 pandemic in

India: An empirical investigation

Prayas Sharma

1

|Ashish Kumar Singh

3

|Bharti Agrawal

2

|Anukriti Sharma

1

1

School of Business, University of Petroleum

and Energy Studies, Dehradun, Uttarakhand,

India

2

Shri Vaishnav Institute of Management,

Indore, Madhya Pradesh, India

3

Department of Management Studies, Raj

Kumar Goel Institute of Technology,

Ghaziabad, Uttar Pradesh, India

Correspondence

Prayas Sharma, School of Business, University

of Petroleum and Energy Studies, Dehradun,

Uttarakhand 248007, India.

Email: prayassharma02@gmail.com

This study is an attempt to find and analyze the correlation between Covid-19 pan-

demic and weather conditions in Indian context. Secondary data analysis of surveil-

lance data of COVID-19 is taken from Wikipedia (updating information from World

Health Organization) & statista.com and weather data through Power Data Access

Viewer (DAV) (power.Iarc.nasa.gov) from NASA after mentioning latitude and longi-

tude of India. The minimum temperature (C) at 2 metre, maximum temperature (C)

at 2 metre, temperature (C) at 2 metre and relative humidity (%) are taken as compo-

nent of weather. To find the association, Spearman's rank correlation test was

applied. The minimum, maximum temperature (C) at 2 m, temperatures (C) at2 m

andhumidityat2 maresignificantlycorrelatedwithCOVID-19pandemiccases

(r= 0.93, 0.94, 0.83, and 0.30) at 99% two-tailed significance level. The findings serve

as an initial evidence to reduce the incidence rate of COVID-19 in India and useful in

policy making.

1|INTRODUCTION

A novel human coronavirus, named as severe respiratory syndrome

coronavirus subsequently named as SARS-CoV-2 was first reported

in Wuhan, China, in December 2019 (Holshue et al., 2020; Sohrabi

et al., 2020). Published literature can trace the beginning of symp-

tomatic individuals back to the beginning of December 2019. In a

meeting on January 30, 2020, as per the International Health Regu-

lations (IHR, 2005) emergency committee, the outbreak of novel

coronavirus (2019-nCoV) was declaredby the WHO a Public

Health Emergency of InternationalConcern (PHEIC) as it had

spread to 18 countries with four countriesreporting human-to-

human transmission. On February 11, 2020, the WHO Director-

General, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, announced that the

disease caused by this new CoV was a “COVID-19,”which is the

acronym of “coronavirus disease 2019.”This new virus seems to be

very contagious and has quickly spread globally. COVID-19 is

spreading rapidly throughout the world; almost in all developed and

developing countries and nations (Amirhossein Takian &

Kazempour-Ardebili, 2020; Holshue et al., 2020; So hrabi et al., 2020;

van Doremalen et al., 2020). On March 11, when the number of

COVID-19 cases outside China has increased 13 times and the

number of countries involved has tripled with more than 118,000

cases in 114 countries and over 4,000 deaths, WHO declared the

COVID-19 outbreak as a pandemic. This has resulted in lockdown

in many nations worldwide.

The first case of COVID-19 was reported in India on January

30, 2020 with origin from China (PIB, 2020). It spreads to the

maximum districts of the country. On March 24, the Government

of India ordered a nationwide lockdown for 21days, limiting

movement of the entire 1.3 billion population of India as a pre-

ventive measure against the 2020 coronavirus pandemic in India.

It was ordered after a 14hr voluntary public curfew on March

22, followed by enforcement of a series of regulations in the

country's COVID-19-affected regions. The lockdown was placed

when the number of confirmed positive coronavirus cases in

India was approximately 500. This lockdown enforces restric-

tions and self-quarantine measures. Lockdown was extended

nationwide till May 3, with a conditional relaxation promised

after April 20 for the regions where the spread has been con-

tained by then.

As on April 27, 2020, the total cases reported in India were

27,977 with 6,523 recoveries and 884 deaths (Covid-19 in 2020).

Hospital isolation of all confirmed cases, tracing and home quaran-

tine of the contacts is ongoing. However, the rate of infection in

India is fewer as compared with other countries. Common signs and

Received: 22 May 2020Revised: 4 June 2020Accepted: 11 June 2020

DOI: 10.1002/pa.2222

J Public Affairs. 2020;20:e2222.wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/pa© 2020 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd1of5

https://doi.org/10.1002/pa.2222