Environmental Impact of COVID-19 Pandemic in India

The ongoing pandemic caused by COVID-19 virus has paralyzed everyday life across the globe. To limit spread of infection, the Government of India issued a Nation-wide lockdown, on th March 24 , which ensued a complete halting of human activities in India. Soon reports of unusual drops in pollution levels and rare animal sightings were recorded by the media. In this review article, authors explore both direct and indirect environmental impacts of this pandemic. With a halt in manufacturing industries and automobiles plying, air pollution levels went down drastically. Water pollution levels were also recorded to be on the down trend. Unusual sightings of the Himalayas from towns, hundreds of kilometers away were a sight missed for several decades, exemplifying the effect of drop in particulate matter that reduce long range visibility. With the increase in COVID cases, more and more biomedical wastes were also produced, causing a major biomedical hazard threat to an infrastructure not built to handle such volumes of infective wastes. The extent of the environmental impact of this pandemic is too soon to be assessed properly, but this review delineates the initial environmental impact that this deadly pandemic has thrown upon mankind.