Chapter 5
The Dual Impact of Lockdown
on Curbing COVID-19 Spread and Rise
of Air Quality Index in India
Swagatam Roy and Ahan Chatterjee
Abstract The number of reported cases in India has been scaling up in geometric
progression despite the stringent lockdown norms imposed to keep people indoors
since late March. Interestingly, on 31st March there were 1117 affected cases, 33,610
on 30th April and 511,478 till June 26—an unprecedented rise in the numbers. In
the present research article, we propose a differential equation-based mathematical
model for modeling India’s COVID-19 that incorporates the lockdown effect while
looking at the future predictions in terms of the spread and the extent to which
lockdown has been effective in India. We have estimated the growth of COVID19 across India using modified SIR modeling, which is a Compartmental model
in Epidemiology. Further, the use of SIQR model to estimate the growth of this
disease across the country. Also, a constant factor has been introduced in the model
to measure the number of corona-affected patients count due to any accidental mass
crowd gathering. Along with that, we analyse the pollution level of India under three
conditional scenarios viz. Pre-Lockdown, During Lockdown and After Lockdown.
From the epidemiological evidences, it is evident that several pollutants like pm
2.5, NO 2 , SO 2 , O
3 , CO noxious effects of pollution. Here we will analyse the basic
contributing factor of pollution and which majorly impacts AQI. We will also visualise the change of AQI in the context of the season or a particular time, i.e. during
the festive season and Diwali pollution highly increases and it continues till April.
During COVID-19, to avoid the contamination and spreading of the virus, Govt of
India declared Lockdown and due to this all the industrial works gets stopped and the
reduction of vehicular waste also reduced and thus the concentration of pollutants
(μg/m
3 ) decreases immensely. It can be interpreted that due to closure of industries
and decreases in the number of vehicles, the concentration of the pollutants decreases
thus it can be said that COVID-19 is a blessing to nature. But after reopening, i.e.
unlock 1 the concentration, increases rapidly and immensely and from the reports, it
is evident that in only in ecological regions, there is an increase of 400%. Thus after
S. Roy · A. Chatterjee (B)
Department of Computer Science and Engineering, The Neotia University, Sarisha, India
e-mail: chatterjeeahan02@gmail.com
S. Roy
e-mail: swagatamr577@gmail.com
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021
C. Chakraborty et al. (eds.), The Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Green Societies,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-66490-9_5
113
The Dual Impact of Lockdown
on Curbing COVID-19 Spread and Rise
of Air Quality Index in India
Swagatam Roy and Ahan Chatterjee
Abstract The number of reported cases in India has been scaling up in geometric
progression despite the stringent lockdown norms imposed to keep people indoors
since late March. Interestingly, on 31st March there were 1117 affected cases, 33,610
on 30th April and 511,478 till June 26—an unprecedented rise in the numbers. In
the present research article, we propose a differential equation-based mathematical
model for modeling India’s COVID-19 that incorporates the lockdown effect while
looking at the future predictions in terms of the spread and the extent to which
lockdown has been effective in India. We have estimated the growth of COVID19 across India using modified SIR modeling, which is a Compartmental model
in Epidemiology. Further, the use of SIQR model to estimate the growth of this
disease across the country. Also, a constant factor has been introduced in the model
to measure the number of corona-affected patients count due to any accidental mass
crowd gathering. Along with that, we analyse the pollution level of India under three
conditional scenarios viz. Pre-Lockdown, During Lockdown and After Lockdown.
From the epidemiological evidences, it is evident that several pollutants like pm
2.5, NO 2 , SO 2 , O
3 , CO noxious effects of pollution. Here we will analyse the basic
contributing factor of pollution and which majorly impacts AQI. We will also visualise the change of AQI in the context of the season or a particular time, i.e. during
the festive season and Diwali pollution highly increases and it continues till April.
During COVID-19, to avoid the contamination and spreading of the virus, Govt of
India declared Lockdown and due to this all the industrial works gets stopped and the
reduction of vehicular waste also reduced and thus the concentration of pollutants
(μg/m
3 ) decreases immensely. It can be interpreted that due to closure of industries
and decreases in the number of vehicles, the concentration of the pollutants decreases
thus it can be said that COVID-19 is a blessing to nature. But after reopening, i.e.
unlock 1 the concentration, increases rapidly and immensely and from the reports, it
is evident that in only in ecological regions, there is an increase of 400%. Thus after
S. Roy · A. Chatterjee (B)
Department of Computer Science and Engineering, The Neotia University, Sarisha, India
e-mail: chatterjeeahan02@gmail.com
S. Roy
e-mail: swagatamr577@gmail.com
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021
C. Chakraborty et al. (eds.), The Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Green Societies,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-66490-9_5
113