Assessing the impact of prolonged air pollution exposure on COVID-19 mortality in Maharashtra, India using remotely sensed data

The work presented here aims to understand how exposure to air pollutants for a prolonged period of time might correlate with the number of COVID-19 deaths. In our past work, we had investigated this, and found strong correlation between the two. In our current work, we divided cities based on various factors like population density, number of vehicles and so on, for points-based analysis. We used information from the Sentinel-5P satellite to determine the pollution concentration for cities. Specifically, we looked at the concentration of sulfur dioxide (SO2), nitrogen dioxide (NO2), aerosols, carbon monoxide (CO), and ozone (O3). The data regarding the number of deaths due to COVID-19 was gathered from various news reports. Our analysis further strengthened the hypothesis of a strong link between long-term exposure to air pollutants and the number of COVID-19 deaths. This correlation was even stronger for cities likely to have higher air pollution load.