COVID-19 pandemic has been a tale of morbidity & mortality across the Globe. Ongoing pandemic has eventually urged the need of implementing sophisticated methods in the epidemiological studies to appraise the current and future trends of COVID-19 pandemic that is consuming human population at rapid rate and causing serious liquidity problems due to prolonged & unavoidable lockdowns oriented with normal human actions. Historical outbreaks of various infectious outbreaks have offered some disease ecological models to understand the spatial & temporal course of current infectious pandemic, that will be benefitted to estimate the current & future pattern of COVID-19 pandemic (J&K Advisory Committee Report, 2021). The pandemic of COVID-19 caused by Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) has been initially reported in patients with comorbidity such as pneumonia in the Wuhan city of China and was supposed to spread in the regions of Southeast Asia by epidemiological modeling center taking into consideration its (China) geographical proximity and substantial travel connections with these regions (Sajadi et al, 2020). Instead of Southeast Asia COVID-19 pandemic were diffused to other parts of the globe such as Europe, North America which became the largest COVID-19 epicenters with high cases of morbidity and mortality across the human planet (Sajadi et al, 2020).
Albeit, countries around the globe are striving hard to mitigate the spread of COVID-19 by formulating & executing various strategies such as country lockdown, closing schools, halting transports, curtaining borders of regional, national, international boundaries to break the deadly chain of COVID-19 strain virus (Subramanian et al, 2020). Developing and under-developed countries are at higher risk due to poor health care infrastructure, deprived socio- economic, lack of perception, poverty, low standard of living, illiteracy, poor housing environment resulted in the weak immune system. (Sahoo et al, 2020). Lessening approaches in social distancing, protective precautions & other SOP protocols recommended for COVID-19 may result in sharp increase in the incidence of COVID-19 cases is therefore, perquisite to adhere social distance, use of masks, hand washes & other WHO recommended SOP’s along with fast mass vaccination drive (Theeb et al, 2021).
Machine Learning (ML) and Cloud Computing can be used with more effectively and efficiently to track the progression of this pandemic across the globe by predicting future trends of COVID-19 that will be used in designing strategies and policies to manage its diffusion (Shreshth et al,2020). An artificial-intelligence technique based on a deep convolutional neural network (CNN) to detect COVID-19 patients using real-world datasets is currently used in detection of COVID-19 pandemic, that is increasing exponentially with almost 35 million confirmed cases globally (Moutaz et al, 2020). Forecasting the spread of COVID-19 pandemic requires ample historical data and it is also worth to mention that no prediction is certain as future seldomly repeats with the same intensity (Petropoulos et al, 2020). Understanding the early signs of dynamic nature of this infectious global pandemic and apprising the overall efficacy of current measures is very important in asserting the potential while adopting sustainable controlled measures in the newer areas (Samuel et al, 2020).
It is important to collect, store, manipulate, analyze and interpret COVID-19 data to disseminate necessary information & put forward rational strategies for mitigating the burden of COVID-19 pandemic (Ahmadi et al, 2021). COVID-19 which is an extreme current public threat enveloping all irrespective of region, social-cultural, religious, & economic backgrounds. COVID-19 pandemic with its extreme intensity in the spread and alarmingly high fatality rate is a huge global concern. Integration of mathematical modeling and GIS can play a decisive role in mitigating the diffusion and predicting the further growth of pandemic (Ankush 2020).
Geographical knowledge concerning with identifying the space (existence), structure and inter-relation of the phenomena can play a crucial role in understanding and mitigating of COVID-19 pandemic (ESRI 2020). Modern GIS technologies centre around web-based tools, improved data sharing and real-time information to support critical decision-making (Kamel et al, 2020). Dashboards exemplify those ideals and have been extremely popular in sharing and understanding the spread of SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus. Communication through map-based dashboards offers accessible information to people around the world eager to protect themselves and their communities. This tool type improves data transparency and helps authorities disseminate information (Kamel et al, 2020).
Spatial analysis of data, through geographic information system (GIS) have become an essential techniques and are in great demand in academic schools of public health, environmental health, and in public health agencies that are responsible for disease surveillance, control and health planning (Mayer 1983). In 2003, the international organization of health in Europe, projected the benefit of using geographic information system (GIS) for the identification of diseases that can be linked in understanding the features such as spatial variation of diseases, and their association to environmental factors and the health care system (Aghajani et al. 2017). With the advancement of analytical and computing power, GIS technology has boosted the importance of mapping epidemiological diseases considerably (Malczewski 2004). The mapping of disease helps in interpreting the delineated area more effectively and efficiently that will be great asset for epidemiological planning (Anna et al, 2014).
The need of an hour is to get location by location risk assessment so that timely preventive measures can be taken. Countries across the globe incorporation with WHO are engaged in developing not only effective & efficient vaccines but its availability to every people in the World and so far WHO has effectively rolled 7 different vaccines across three formats to boost body’s natural immune system (WHO 2021).
India which is the second largest populated and 7th largest in area was hit by the COVID-19 pandemic early 2020 with prolonged continuation & meager declined trend in the winter months, eventually proved a fairy tale fiction which developed a sense of unacceptable lethargy among people in general & to some extent the concerned administration. Till now country as whole has marked the second highest number of infected cases with nearly 2.83 crore infected cases reported & over 3.35 lacs deaths with non-stop going (https://github.com/CSSEGISandData ). The union territory of Jammu & Kashmir following the foot step of national guidelines has also showed a high rise in daily cases & is expected to increase manifold in the coming months, keeping in view the nature of perpetual backwardness in terms of socio-economic, political instability, unique topographical identity, prevalent respiratory problems & current available health care infrastructure (Wani et al, 2020) might induce the new pandemic epicenter. The study might prove the limelight for future epidemiological studies in formulating, executing and implementing the mitigating strategies not only to the current ongoing biological disasters but might prove vital for the future studies to be prepared & respond any such biological disaster with the least reactive time bound.