Impact of the wind conditions on COVID-19 pandemic: A new insight for direction of the spread of the virus.

ABSTRACT

COVID-19 pandemic is the global health crisis of our time. A recent study has found that the virus can remain viable in air for multiple hours, thus the spread of virus can be affected by wind conditions such as wind speed and direction. Therefore, this study aims to analyze the impact of wind conditions on COVID-19 pandemic in Jakarta, Indonesia. The wind parameters were evaluated using wind roses analysis to estimate the direction of spread of virus. The effect of meteorological factors such as wind speed, temperature, sunshine hours, rainfall and humidity on COVID-19 cases was examined using Spearman correlation test. Result of study reveals that a low wind speed is significantly correlated with a higher COVID-19 cases (r = -0.314; p < 0.05). Similarly, low temperatures and sunshine hours are correlated with a higher COVID-19 cases (r = -0.447; p < 0.01, r = -0.362; p < 0.05, respectively). However, there are not significant linear correlations between humidity and rainfall with COVID-19 cases (p > 0.05). In addition, wind rose diagrams indicate that the highest COVID-19 cases fits in with wind direction blows. In study area, the dominant wind direction blows to the Southeast and East parts of the area with wind speed value is low in range from 3.60 to 5.70 m/s. In conclusion, low wind speed is a contributor to increase COVID-19 cases.