The Effects of Air Pollution and Meteorological Factors in the Transmission and Lethality of COVID-19

ABSTRACT

The COVID-19 epidemic continues to have a negative impact on the economy and public health. There is a correlation between certain limits (meteorological factors and air pollution statistics) and verified fatal instances of Corona Virus Disease 2019 (COVID-19), according to several researchers. It has not yet been determined how these elements affect COVID-19. Using air pollution data and meteorological data from 15 cities in India from 2020 to 2022, Convergent Cross Mapping (CCM) is utilized to set up the causal link with new confirmed and fatal cases of COVID-19 in this study. Our experimental results show that the causal order of the factors influencing the diagnosis of COVID-19 is humidity, PM25, temperature, CO, NO2, O3, PM10. In contrast to other parameters, temperature, PM25, and humidity are more causally associated with COVID-19, while data on air pollution are less causally related to the number of new COVID-19 cases. The causal order of the factors affecting the new death toll is as follows temperature, PM25, humidity, O3, CO, PM10, NO2. The causality of temperature with new COVID-19 fatalities in India was higher than the causation of humidity with new COVID-19 deaths, and O3 also showed higher causality with it. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.