Survey Regarding Changing Food Habits in Wake of COVID-19

The COVID-19 pandemic was caused by the emergence of the new coronavirus (SARS-Cov2) in Wuhan, China, on December 12, 2019, and it has significantly impacted human health. It has also caused abrupt changes in lifestyle that have had social and economic repercussions, including social exclusion and isolation at home. This study aimed to investigate how COVID-19 has affected the food habits and lifestyle of the general population. A cross-sectional survey was conducted in Chennai to assess the awareness level of the population regarding the protective measures they take during the pandemic, and 500 participants of all ages were included in the study. Statistical analysis was performed using SPSS software. The study found that over 50% of the participants increased their intake of vegetables and fruits, and about 49.33% decreased their intake of fast food and snacks. Furthermore, more than 40% of the participants added immune-boosting ingredients to their diet. These results suggest that the study population adopted healthier dietary habits and behaviors, including a more nutritious diet with more vegetables, immune-boosting foods, and increased water intake. © 2023 IEEE.

How Seafood Wholesale Markets Matter for Urban Food Security: Evidence from Chennai, India.

Urban sites gather poverty in particular locations and often require bulk food system approaches for addressing prevalent food security and nutrition needs. The food systems that service them are, however, characterized by perishability and large irregularities in supply. Seafood is currently recognized as contributing in a major way to food security and nutrition, and it is to assessing the role of wholesale markets in meeting the needs of the urban poor that this paper is directed. It zooms in on the city of Chennai, India, where an estimated 40% of the population is considered poor and marine fish plays a crucial role in diets. Building on one-and-a-half years of field research in the pre-COVID-19 period, the paper analyses the performance of one of the city's largest fish wholesale markets, Vanagaram, in relation to the four commonly recognized pillars of food security. Results demonstrate how urban food systems function as major suppliers of fish (and other food items) to thousands of low- and middle-income households. Most importantly, this case study demonstrates the crucial role that is played by wholesale markets in merging low-price fish supplies from different geographic regions and thereby ensuring food security of poorer inhabitants.

Dans les zones urbaines, la pauvreté se concentre dans des sites spécifiques qui nécessitent souvent des systèmes alimentaires qui s'appuient sur la vente en gros pour répondre aux besoins en matière de sécurité alimentaire et d'apport nutritionnel. Les systèmes alimentaires qui les desservent sont cependant caractérisés par la périssabilité des aliments et de grandes irrégularités dans l'approvisionnement. Actuellement, il est reconnu que les produits de la mer contribuent de façon significative à la sécurité alimentaire et aux apports nutritionnels. Cet article cherche à évaluer le rôle du marché de la vente en gros dans la satisfaction des besoins des personnes en situation de pauvreté dans les villes. Il se concentre sur la ville de Chennai, en Inde, où environ 40% de la population est considérée comme étant en situation de pauvreté et où les poissons de mer jouent un rôle crucial dans l'alimentation. Cet article s'appuie sur des recherches menées sur le terrain pendant un an et demi avant la COVID-19, et analyze la performance de l'un des plus grands marchés de vente en gros de poisson de la ville, Vanagaram, par rapport aux quatre piliers communément reconnus de la sécurité alimentaire. Les résultats montrent la façon dont les systèmes alimentaires urbains fonctionnent comme d'importants fournisseurs de poisson (et d'autres produits alimentaires) pour des milliers de ménages à revenu faible ou moyen. Plus important encore, cette étude de cas démontre le rôle crucial que jouent les marchés de vente en gros pour faire fusionner l'approvisionnement en poisson à bas prix issu de différentes zones géographiques et pour garantir la sécurité alimentaire des habitant·e·s les plus pauvres.

Associated impact of the COVID-19 induced lockdown on air quality of Kolkata Metropolitan Area (India)

As a pandemic, COVID 19 spread worldwide in early 2020. Primarily densely populated countries had remained vulnerable due to this biological hazard. Many people were forced to stay home owing to nature of the disease and no respite. A nationwide lockdown was implemented in India for 29 days (March 24th to April 21st) of 2020 during the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. During the nationwide lockdown, industries, transport, and other commercial activities were suspended, except for necessary services. During the entire pandemic situation, an affirmative impact was observed as the air quality was reported to have improved worldwide. The complete economic lockdown to check COVID-19, brought unforeseen relief from severe condition of air quality. An apparent, reduction in level of PM2.5 and Air Quality Index (AQI) was experienced over Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata, Hyderabad, and Chennai. Present work explores the various metrics of air pollution in Kolkata, West Bengal, India (imposed as a result of containment measure for COVID-19). The polluting parameters (e.g., PM10, PM2.5, SO2, NO2, CO, O3, and NH3) were chosen for seven monitoring stations (Ballygunge, Fort William, Victoria, Bidhannagar, Jadavpur, Rabindra Bharati, Rabindra Sarabar), which are spread across the metropolitan area of Kolkata. National Air Quality Index (NAQI) has been used to show pre-and during-lockdown air quality spatial patterns. The findings showed major changes in air quality throughout the lockdown period. The highest reduction in pollutants emission was observed for: PM10 (- 60.82%), PM2.5 (-45.05%) and NO2 (-62.27%), followed by NH3 (- 32.12%) and SO2 (-32.00%), CO (-47.46%), O3 (15.10%). During the lockdown, the NAQI value was reduced by 52.93% in the study area. © 2022 University of Craiova, Faculty of Social Sciences, Department of Geography. All rights reserved.

Empirical evidence of effects of stringency amid Covid-19 pandemic spread.

The objective of this paper is to provide an insight on effect of stringency in Covid-19 spread in India especially in Chennai, a city were more lockdown, and restrictions was imposed to control the infection. Even though the restriction was imposed in the country by the end of March 2020, the growth reduction was seen in the mid of June as the awareness was increased. The average Covid-19 case growth was got reduce from 3.43 to 2.62% by July mid. To analysis the impact of stringency, a detailed analysis was done on Chennai city which was imposed with more repeated lockdowns to flatten the curve. We tried to fit a regression line with three difference scenario of data. The results show a promising R-squared and p value, with a right skewed distribution normal probability plot. The impact of lockdown in people's lives in different sectors were also discussed in this paper.

A cross-sectional comparative study of anxiety and depression among doctors working in covid care centres during the first and second waves of COVID-19 pandemic in Chennai, Tamil Nadu

Background: Doctors are at significant risk of developing psychological morbidity during the coronavirus diseases 2019 (COVID-19) Pandemic due to the shortage of resources and changing medical protocols. The fear, stigma, prejudice, and marginalization toward COVID-19 added with the physical discomfort of using personal protective equipment kits leads to mental exhaustion among doctors. Aims and Objectives: The aim of the study was to estimate and compare the prevalence and level of anxiety and depression along with its risk factors among doctors working in COVID Care centers during the COVID-19 pandemic's First and Second wave. Materials and Methods: A cross-sectional study among 200 doctors working in the COVID care centers using mailed questionnaires was conducted. A convenient sampling method was used to include the study participants. Collected data were entered in an MS Excel spreadsheet and analyzed using SPSS version 21.0. Results: During the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, the observed prevalence of the symptoms of depression and anxiety respectively among doctors was 42% and 56% whereas it increased to 83% and 82%, respectively, during the second wave. Conclusion: The present study highlighted the high prevalence of anxiety and depression among doctors. As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to sweep the world, the global doctors' community have to be sensitized to the prevalence of psychological disorders and a necessary appropriate psychological support strategy needs to be developed. [ FROM AUTHOR]

Assessment of air quality index and pollutants in Chennai city, India: Pre-Covid and during- Covid period

The lockdown was implemented by the government of India during the pandemic period due to Covid-19. This paper presents the effect of lockdown on the air quality index and various pollutants in five major locations in the Chennai city of Tamil Nadu. The air pollutants such as PM10, PM2.5, SO2 and NO2 from the monitoring stations were analyzed from 2018 to 2019 (pre-Covid period) and from 2020 to 2021 (during-Covid period). The results demonstrated that the concentration of PM10 and PM2.5 reduced about 48% and 39% respectively. Similarly, significant reduction in the pollutants SO2 (-25%) and NO2 (-10%) has been observed. In the same way, AQI level before and during lockdown in Chennai city was observed satisfactory to moderate categories. The maximum reduction in AQI was observed in Adyar (-50.38%), followed by Nungambakkam (-44.18%), TNagar (-40.31%), Anna Nagar (-39.98%) and Kilpauk (-30.74%). Overall study implies that regulatory measures in a certain location in a suitable time period control the pollution and protects the environment.

Customer preferences for choosing the dairy products during COVID 19 with reference to Chennai

The Research was focused on the Diary Products like milk, curd, sweets, etc. The research was confine 10 locations in the Andhra Pradesh States in Chennai surrounded Sholinganallur places. The purpose of this research was to find out the customer tastes and preferences for choosing the milk products. The instruments were prepared using the nominal and ordinal scale according to the review of literature. The data was analysis using the SPSS Software percentage table calculations and hypothesis was tested using the Chi Square testing. The outcomes of the research stated clearly on the quality of services customers are receiving through Diary parlour. Conclusion: Customers are satisfied with the diary products and services offer even in the Covid 19 conditions. © 2022 International Journal of Health Sciences. All rights reserved.

A Study on Impact of Covid-19 Among the Employees of It Industry With Reference to Chennai City

The COVID-19 pandemic has affected all sectors of the sector financial system and society. The Information Technology (IT) enterprise is an critical issue of the technology-pushed information financial system of the twenty first century. The IT enterprise specially encompasses IT offerings, IT-enabled offerings (ITES), e-commerce (on line business), Software and Hardware products. Chennai being the biggest operations for India's pinnacle IT corporations like TCS, Infosys, and plenty of different CMMI-degree 5 corporations HCL, Quest Global, UST Global, Verizon, Cognizant and offerings corporations Design Edge Technologies, SRM Technologies, ePay, Paypal and greater have their head-workplaces, regional-workplaces and improvement centres. The primary IT corporations are placed in OMR, Ambattur, Guindy. This paper attempts to degree the effect of Covid -19 pandemic on IT region with the aid of using the usage of questionnaire primarily based totally 85 surveys gathered and pre posted statistics. Also, the take a look at indicates few feasible answers to the demanding situations that raised because of corona crisis. © 2022. Specialusis Ugdymas. All Rights Reserved.

Pandemic Simulation and Contact Tracing: Identifying Super Spreaders

In the context of infectious human borne diseases, super spreaders are people who can transmit diseases to a larger number of people than the average person. Medically, it is assumed that one in every five people can be a super spreader. Using graph theory and social network analysis, we have identified these super spreaders in Chennai, given a synthetic dataset with the location history of a particular individual. We have also predicted the spread of the disease. Network graphs have been used to visualise the spread. This aids visualization of the spread of the pandemic and reduces the ion that accompanies statistical data. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.

Online Class Effectiveness and its Impact on Academic Performance of School Students at Chennai Region

The Covid-19 pandemic affects all areas of line including education institutions. The global lockdown resulted in a stressful situation for educational institutions which transformed the traditional leaning to online learning. Various innovative ICT tools have been applied by educational institutions in order to enhance the interest and ability of students in learning through online classes. Different schools used different application software to take online classes without any interruption. This study aims to find out the online class effectiveness and its impact on school students' academic performance in Chennai region. The study was descriptive and analytical in nature. Both primary and secondary data was collected. The primary data was collected by using structured questionnaire consisting of categorical, ratio and Likert scaled questions. The population of the study consists of parents of those students attending online classes at Chennai region. The sample size of the study was 100 respondents which were collected by using convenient ampling technique. These condary data was collected from the sources namely books, journals, articles, thesis, newspapers and magazines. The statistical tools used to analyze the data are percentage analysis, descriptive statistics, ANOVA and Linear regression analysis. The results of the study revealed that there exists a significant difference among school students' demographic profile and their academic performance. It is also found that there is a significant impact of effectiveness of online class on academic performance of students.

Indoor and Ambient Air Pollution in Chennai, India during COVID-19 Lockdown: An Affordable Sensors Study

The Tamil Nadu Air Pollution and Health Effects study (TAPHE-2) aims to evaluate the relationship between air pollution and birth outcome in a rural-urban cohort of 300 pregnant women. Due to COVID-19 related lockdowns, some TAPHE-2 activities were delayed;however, continuous indoor and outdoor air quality data were collected in and around Chennai, India. We report here the impact of graded COVID-19 lockdown on indoor particulate matter (PM2.5 and PM10) levels based on calibrated data from affordable real-time PM sensors called atmos™ and ambient PM levels from publicly available regulatory monitors. The study period was between 11 March and 30 June 2020 (i.e., 100 days of continuous monitoring), which coincided with four phases of a nationwide graded lockdown. Field calibration coefficients for the atmos PM were derived by collocating them with reference-grade PM monitors. The normalized root mean square error (NRMSE) of the atmos hourly PM2.5 (PM10) improved from 41% to 15% (33% to 18%) after applying the field calibration coefficients. Lockdowns resulted in significant reductions in indoor and ambient PM levels, with the highest reduction observed during lockdown phase 2 (L2) and phase 3 (L3). Reductions as high as 70%, 91%, and 62% were observed in ambient PM2.5, indoor PM2.5, and indoor PM10 relative to pre-lockdown levels (PL), respectively. The indoor PM2.5/PM10 ratio decreased during the lockdown, suggesting a decline in the fine mode dominance in PM10. The indoor-to-outdoor (I/O) ratios in PM2.5 marginally increased during L1, L2, and L3 phases compared to that of PL levels, suggesting an uneven reduction in indoor and ambient PM2.5 levels during the lockdown. © The Author's institution.

Influence of COVID-19 on Microplastics Pollution in Coastal Water and Sediment of Chennai, India

Event of microplastics (plastic garbage < 5 mm) along the coast is a developing concern around the world, because of the expanded contribution of disposed of squanders from different sources. Around 400 million tons of plastic are produced per year worldwide, out of which only 18% is recycled that has led to its poor disposal practices. The significance of my work is to analyze mainly the positive impacts due to lockdown during COVID-19. The discharged plastics remain in the environment for several 100 years either in their original or fragmented form. The fragmentation of particles is caused by several factors like wind currents, wave currents, abrasions, exposure to sunlight, etc. The study of the distribution of microplastics in time and space, as well as their distribution on parameters, such as polymer type, size, shape, in different coastal environmental all over the world, is the need of the hour. This study describes a framework to assess the presence and distribution of microplastics in marine water and sediments of Adyar and Cooum Estuary along the Chennai coast. Ten sampling sites from each estuary were selected from which surface water and sediments were collected. The samples were carried over to the laboratory for analyzing the presence of microplastic content, and also basic seawater quality parameters were analyzed in the Environmental Engineering Department laboratory. The study investigated the presence and distribution of microplastics before and during COVID-19. The presence and distribution study of microplastics in coastal waters and sediments were carried out by means of FTIR and XRD spectroscopy methods. From this analysis, microplastics occur in both estuaries and there is a significant reduction in Microplastic content in both estuaries because of continuous lockdown due to COVID-19. From FTIR analysis, it was found that the concentration of Polyethylene(PE) and Polypropylene (PP) was higher than the other types of polymer in both the locations and both the times (August 2019 and 2020). And from XRD analysis, black residues were found on most of the microplastics surfaces. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.

Comparative Statistical Analysis to Determine the Impact of COVID-19 Lockdown on PM2.5 Concentration in Chennai City, India

The COVID-19 pandemic has jolted India as it has with the world, and the death toll has crossed the 1.5 lakh mark as of February 2021. To curb this wildfire like the spread of the virus, the Government of India has imposed a nationwide phased lockdown from 25 March 2020 to 31 May 2020. Studies have shown that more than 22 cities in India recorded a drastic decrease in PM2.5 during this lockdown period. This research aims to study the impact of this phased lockdown on Particulate Matter (PM2.5) by means of statistical analyses. The PM2.5 concentration for Pre-COVID years up to the end of Phase-IV of the lockdown is acquired via the continuous air quality monitoring stations of the Central Pollution Control Board in three locations;namely, Velachery, Alandur and Manali. Graphical analysis provides insight into the efficiency of lockdown showing April 2020 achieved the highest reduction in PM2.5 concentration in all three locations. Manali being an industrial area notices a significant increase as evidenced by the one-way ANVOA in May 2020 when the Government sanctioned relaxations on the logistical and industrial front. Analysis of Summer 2020 PM2.5 levels with previous years shows an overall decrease through the years and a significant decrease specifically in 2020. Comparison of air quality during the lockdown period with the previous years provides a distinctive perspective to understand the extent of anthropogenic influence on the air quality of Chennai, which can in turn act as a tool to identify suitable mitigation measures to vastly improve quality of life. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.

Population-Based Serosurvey for Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 Transmission, Chennai, India.

We conducted a cross-sectional survey to estimate the seroprevalence of IgG against severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 in Chennai, India. Among 12,405 serum samples tested, weighted seroprevalence was 18.4% (95% CI 14.8%-22.6%). These findings indicate most of the population of Chennai is still susceptible to this virus.