The National Institute of Technology – Warangal (NIT-W) has bagged a project from a global consortium to study the impact of temperature and humidity on coronavirus.

The project, mooted by Soumya Lipsa Rath (Department of Biotechnology) and Kishant Kumar (Department of Chemical Engineering) of NIT-W, will study dependence of structure and dynamics of Novel SARS-CoV-2 on temperature and humidity in the atmosphere.

The project was awarded by the Covid-19 High Performance Computing Consortium, which comprises top global institutes and firms, will provide high-performance computing facilities available at NASA, IBM, Google Cloud, Microsoft and MIT, University of Pittsburgh and University of Illinois.

“Though the coronavirus family of viruses such as SARS and MERS infected people in the past, they gradually disappeared in hot and humid conditions,” an official from NIT-W said.

“Data obtained from countries with higher temperature and humidity also indicate a low propensity of infection,” he said.

“We will study the impact of atmospheric conditions – temperature and humidity, and try to unravel if the virus undergoes any biophysical changes with change in atmospheric conditions,” he said.

This study would open a new dimension in the characterisation of SARS-CoV-2 and future corona-family of viruses in prevention, categorisation and drug designing aspects, the proposal from NIT observed.

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