Impact of Hurricane Ida on Covid-19 surge and its relationship with vaccination status in the United States

COVID-19 pandemic has spread around the world since December 2019. Preventive measures such as social distancing and masking have been implemented to contain the virus transmission and associated morbidity and mortality. The development of highly effective vaccines has further aided in mitigating viral spread. In the event of natural disasters recommended preventative measure can be compromised and accelerate the virus spread; however, the impact of natural disasters during COVID-19 remains poorly examined. Hurricane Ida struck the coastal regions of United States during August 29 to September 04, 2021 and forced evacuation of hundreds of thousands in temporary shelters, a favorable scenario for the predominant, highly transmissible delta strain of SARS-CoV-2. In this study, we performed a short-term analysis of daily and weekly COVID-19 cases and deaths before Ida (August 22-28, 2021), during Ida (August 29 to September 4, 2021) and three-week post-Ida (August 05 to September 25, 2021) in 12 states. Post-Ida, the daily cases and deaths (per 100,000 people) showed a clear spike and weekly analysis showed similar to 20% increase in some states during the first week of post-Ida. Interestingly, correlation analysis reveals that states with low vaccination rates exhibit remarkable increase in COVID-19 cases (r = -0.92, p < 0.05) and deaths (r = -0.94, p < 0.05). In most states, there was evident surge in cases and deaths, although it was largely due to devastating flooding of hurricane Ida's remnants forcing mass evacuations for longer duration. These results indicate that natural disasters can compound pandemic preparedness efforts, exacerbate the risk of virus.