Understanding the Impact of Crowding on COVID-19 Transmission

Cities are dense agglomerations of people which rely on economy of scale and proximity to increase production efficiency but with COVID-19 thriving on proximity, there is a popular misconception that high population density catalyzes the spread of infectious disease as it increases the face to face interactions. The main focus of this research is to understand the effect of crowding (density) on virus transmission. The study is centered on four highly populated cities of India, i.e., Mumbai, Bengaluru, Surat, and Pune which had been virus hotspots in 2020 and 2021. Crowding metrics (population, street, and indoor crowding, density—gross and net) and its correlation with COVID-19 incidence rate are studied in these four cities during both waves to understand the correlation of these variables with the spread of the contagion. The findings contradict the myth that dense cities are vulnerable to pandemics. In fact rather than density, the other parameters of crowding like population have a strong relationship with COVID-19 incidence rather than density.