Dealing with Covid-19 infections in Kolkata, India: A GIS based risk analysis and implications for future scenarios

ABSTRACT

The Covid-19 pandemic has inherently affected daily lives of people around the world. We, the people, have already started to live in a new-normal way, such as wearing masks, keeping a safe distance from others and maintaining higher level of health & hygiene standards. However, because of this pandemic, the global economy has taken a major blow. Many people have lost their livelihood, and now facing challenges in getting better healthcare facilities and food for survival. Given the serious challenges to the problem, this paper analyzes demographic data to predict vulnerable areas in Kolkata metropolitan city that houses nearly one-third of its population in slums and one-fifth below poverty level, under compromised living conditions. The analysis revealed that the highest risk areas are located in the east and west of the city, the area to a great extent overlapped with wards containing larger share of population below poverty level and are also living in slums. The analysis of publicly accessible Covid-19 case records and containment zones data indicate the hardest hit areas lies in the central Kolkata and several wards along the eastern and northeastern border of the Kolkata Municipal Corporation. The data further revealed that the virus infections have extended to the south Kolkata with increasing number of broad-based containment zones with heightened cases. The analysis of demographic characteristics of the hardest hit wards revealed that not a single variables are directly associated with the increase in the number of containments for a particular ward. The ranking of wards based on four intervention criterion have suggested that the lack of social awareness along with lack of social distancing have dominantly contributed to the increasing number of containments of Covid-19 cases in Kolkata. Determination of optimized ranking and Spearmans rank correlation coefficient of the wards based on four intervention criterion provided a basis for the policy makers to assess ward-based interventions criterion to control further spread of the disease and/or prevent second wave of infections. Given that the effective antiviral drugs is far away from common publics reach, the application of our study approach would benefit saving lives of many vulnerable populations.