COVID-19 and urban vulnerability in India

Abstract

The global pandemic has an inherently urban character. The UN-Habitat's publication of a Response Plan for mollification of the SARS-CoV-2 based externalities in the cities of the world testifies to that. This article takes the UN-Habitat report as the premise to carry out an empirical investigation in the four major metro cities of India. The report's concern with the urban character of the pandemic has underlined the role of cities in disease transmission. In that wake, the study demarcates factors at the sub-city level that tend to jeopardize the two mandatory precautionary measures during COVID-19-Social Distancing and Lockdown. It investigates those factors through a Covid Vulnerability Index. The Index devised with the help of Analytic Hierarchy Process demarcates the low, moderate, high, and very high vulnerable city sub-units. Secondly, UN-Habitat's one of the major action areas is evidence-based knowledge creation through mapping and its analysis. In our study, we do it at a granular scale for arriving at a more nuanced understanding. Thus, in harmony with the UN-habitat's we take the urban seriously and identify the gaps that need to be plugged for the pandemic cities of now and of the future.

Environmentally friendly non-medical mask: An attempt to reduce the environmental impact from used masks during COVID 19 pandemic

“…AHP is a technique which aids in decision making in a complex environment and is designed to select the best from a number of alternatives with many considered variables ( Hambali et al, 2010 ; Vargas, 2010 ). It has been successful in providing solutions to many practical problem ( Cabała, 2010 ) and widely used in healthcare systems ( Requia et al, 2020 ; Singh and Avikal, 2020 ; Tran et al, 2020 ), projects and companies ( Vargas, 2010 ), environmental and community settings ( Aydın et al, 2020 ; Ghosh et al, 2020 ; Mishra et al, 2020 ; Pourghasemi et al, 2020 ; Sarkar, 2020 ), data and information system ( Pietz et al, 2020 ), and other fields.…”

Geographical Appraisal of COVID-19 in West Bengal, India

“…are assumed to cause interference with routine life, catastrophizing interpretation of benign symptoms, and social amplification of risk which lead to coronaphobia Ankita Zaveri and Chouhan ( 2020 ) “Are Child and Youth Population at Lower Risk of COVID-19 Fatalities? Evidences from South-East Asian and European Countries’, this paper highlighted the higher percentage of child and youth population could affect the lower Crude Fatality Rate from COVID-19 in SE Asian countries Mishra et al ( 2020a ) The paper COVID-19 and urban vulnerability in India has developed COVID Vulnerability Index using Analytical Hierarchical Process Chatterjee et al ( 2020a ) In this Healthcare workers & SARS-CoV-2 infection in India study, the focus was to map the vulnerability of the health care workers to COVID 19 Chatterjee et al ( 2020b ) Attitude, practice, behaviour, and mental health impact of COVID-19 on doctors has been studied in this paper. The paper tried to explore the knowledge, attitude, and behavior of doctors regarding this pandemic and how it influences their depression, anxiety, and stress level.…”

“…For example, RNA structure of the Corona virus (Biswas and Majumder 2020 ); ‘Antimicrobial Resistance’ due to use of excessive sanitizers (Bandyopadhyay and Samanta 2020 ); Co-Morbidity and its role on COVID-19 fatality; (Das et al 2020a , b ; Saha and Chouhan 2020 ); Status on learning system etc. due to lockdown related closure of the educational institutes (Kapasia et al 2020 ); Impact of lockdown on reducing pollution load with special emphasis on air and water (Acharya et al 2020 ; Bera et al 2020 ; Mahato and Ghosh 2020 ; Mahato et al 2020 ; Patel et al 2020 ); Vulnerability, public health including mental health, health risk assessment of the common people, health workers including doctors (Ankita Zaveri and Chouhan 2020 ; Arora et al 2020 ; Chatterjee et al 2020a , 2020b ; Das et al 2020a , b ; Dubey et al 2020 ; Ghosh and Sarkar 2020 ; Ghosh et al 2020a , b ; Kam et al 2020 ; Mishra et al 2020a , b ; Murhekar et al 2020 ; Podder et al 2020 ; Rajarshi et al 2020 ; Suri et al 2020 ); Spatial pattern, prediction and Modelling; and Factors for COVID-19. …”

“…Myocardial injury, hypoxia, plaque rupture, arrhythmias, venous thromboembolism, coronary thrombosis, encephalitis, ischemia, inflammation, and lung injury are some of the symptoms related to COVID-19 disease Dubey et al ( 2020 ) Psychosocial impact of COVID-19 was the central focus of this study and it tried to do the investigation with the help of literature survey Spatial pattern, prediction and Modelling Mishra et al ( 2020a , b ) To investigate the COVID-19 and urban vulnerability in India, this paper tried to study sub-city level vulnerability zone with the help of Analytical Hierarchical Process and categorised the city into Low to very high vulnerable zone Saha et al ( 2020 ) To resultant Lockdown due to COVID-19 and its impact on community mobility in India has been analysed in the COVID-19 Community Mobility Reports, 2020. Study figures out mobility trends over time during pre-lockdown and after lockdown period across different categories of places such as retail and recreation, groceries and pharmacies, parks, transit stations, workplaces, and residential areas Mishra et al ( 2020a , b ) COVID-19 in India transmits from the urban to the rural Roy et al (2020) The paper entitled, ‘Spatial prediction of COVID-19 epidemic using ARIMA techniques in India’ tries to use GIS for spatial modelling using Weighted Overlay Method and Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average (ARIMA). Results shows west and south of Indian district are highly vulnerable for COVID-2019 Ghosh et al ( 2020a , b ) This paper tried to prepare dynamic model of infected population due to spreading of pandemic COVID-19 considering both intra and inter zone mobilization factors with rate of detection Kumar et al ( 2020 ) The paper tried to use mathematical model and predict COVID-19 infection in India and correlation analysis of the virus transmission with socio-economic factors.…”

“…Vulnerability, public health including mental health, health risk assessment of the common people, health workers including doctors (Ankita Zaveri and Chouhan 2020 ; Arora et al 2020 ; Chatterjee et al 2020a , 2020b ; Das et al 2020a , b ; Dubey et al 2020 ; Ghosh and Sarkar 2020 ; Ghosh et al 2020a , b ; Kam et al 2020 ; Mishra et al 2020a , b ; Murhekar et al 2020 ; Podder et al 2020 ; Rajarshi et al 2020 ; Suri et al 2020 );…”