COVID-19: CORRELATION OF AMBIENT TEMPERATURE AND COVID-19 INCIDENCE IN A DISTRICT OF RAJASTHAN AND PREDICTION

Abstract

The SARS-CoV-2 is a novel corona virus identified as the cause of COVID-19 and, as the pandemic evolves, many have made parallels to previous epidemics such as SARS-CoV (the cause of an outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome [SARS]) in 2003. In India, the disease was first detected on 30 January 2020 in Kerala in a student who returned from Wuhan. The total (cumulative) number of confirmed infected people is 324101 in Rajasthan and 271282 till now across India (19 March 2021). Many have speculated that, like SARS, the activity of SARS-CoV-2 will subside when the climate becomes warmer. We sought to determine the relationship between ambient temperature and COVID-19 incidence in Bikaner district of Rajasthan state. In this article, we will focus the infected people in Bikaner district and build growth models to predict infected people for that state in the next 30 days. The impact of preventive measures on daily infected-rate is discussed. We analyzed over 272851 COVID-19 cases of Bikaner from February 2020 to March 15, 2021. We find a statistically significant association between total cases or effective reproductive number of COVID-19 and ambient temperature. Our findings do not support the hypothesis that higher temperatures will reduce transmission of COVID-19 and warns the public not to lose vigilance and to continue practicing safety measures such as hand washing, social distancing, and use of facial masks despite the warming climates.