COVID-19 second wave: District level study of concentration of confirmed cases and fatality in India

The paper aims to reveal the spatial pattern of the concentration of COVID-19 confirmed cases and the spread of the pandemic from the Case Fatality Ratio. The study has been accomplished with district-level data. The analysis of the spatial pattern decoding has been done considering the Global and Local Moran's I statistics comprising the linear trend of spatial autocorrelation for the whole India. The timeframe has been divided considering the surge of the second wave in March, 2021 and the peak of the wave in May 2021. The spatial clustering technique presents both the concentration of confirmed cases using Location Quotient analysis and the pattern of spread of the infection-related fatality throughout the country. The high Location Quotient of the confirmed cases strongly clustered around the Mumbai-Puna region, Kerala-Karnataka region, Garhwal Himachal, NCT of Delhi and Ladakh-Kashmir-Himachal Pradesh region during the period of the study. In May, the concentration has randomly clustered around the middle part of India. The Case Fatality Ratio was high in Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Punjab and Haryana at the surge of the second wave. During the peak (May), two significant clusters of high Case Fatality Ratio are observed in and around the Mumbai urban (Maharashtra) and NCT of Delhi (including Punjab-Haryana)