NEW DELHI: There is no association of Covid-19 spread or mortality with temperature and air pollution in India, said an analysis by the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology (IITM) under the Ministry of Earth Sciences.
The scientists at IITM said that preliminary analysis of coronavirus spread in six major Indian cities — Delhi, Kolkata, Chennai, Ahmedabad, Pune and Mumbai — shows no correlation with parameters like temperature and air pollution. Five of the selected cities have heavy Covid-19 load.
“We cannot associate Covid-19 with any parameter like temperature, pollution, ambient air quality based on analysis of disease spread and major pollutants like PM 2.5, PM 10 and nitrogen dioxide (NO2),” said Gufran Beig, Director, System of Air Quality and Weather Forecasting and Research (SAFAR), IITM.
The analysis found that correlation between mean temperature with the rate of mortality in these cities was only 13 per cent while and mean temperature with infectious disease was ‘not good’. “Correlation of ambient PM 2.5 with mortality and morbidity due to Covid-19 is very poor, almost 1 per cent and 18 per cent, respectively. The annual mean nitrogen dioxide correlation with the disease is 10 per cent,” said the analysis.
Several global studies have questioned relationship between temperature and Covid-19 spread, but links between pollution and coronavirus spread has been established by studies done in some of the worst affected countries – the US, China and Italy.