Effect of ambient air pollutants and meteorological factors on COVID-19 transmission

Abstract

Background Since its first appearance in Wuhan China in December 2019, the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has become a worldwide pandemic. Although the COVID-19 is known to cause by human-to-human transmission, it remains largely unclear whether ambient air pollutants and meteorological factors could promote its transmission process. Methods We conducted a retrospective cohort study to understand the correlation between COVID-19 incidence and eight ambient air pollutants (PM2.5, PM10, SO2, CO, NO2, and O3-8 h) and three meteorological variables (temperature, humidity and wind level) in China’s two worst-hit cities, Wuhan and XiaoGan, between Jan 25th to Feb 29th in 2020. Results Our data showed that the COVID-19 incidence was constantly correlated with PM2.5, NO2 and local temperature in both cities. Specifically, in Wuhan, the tightest correlation was observed between NO2 and COVID-19 incidence (R2 = 0.329, p < 0.01). The PM2.5 and CO also present tight correlation with the incidence number, whose R2 equaled 0.174 (p < 0.01) and 0.203 (p < 0.05), respectively. In XiaoGan, in addition to the PM2.5 (R2 = 0.23, p < 0.01) and NO2 (R2 = 0.158, p < 0.05), a notable correlation was also observed between the PM10 and incidence cases (R2 = 0.158, p < 0.05). Moreover, temperature is the only meteorological factors that constantly correlated well with COVID-19 incidence in both Wuhan and XiaoGan, but in a negative pattern (R2 = 0.126 and 0.13, respectively, both p < 0.05). Conclusion Our data concludes that ambient air pollutants, especially PM2.5 and NO2, and temperature are three variables that could potential promote the sustained transmission of COVID-19. Thus, personal protective devices, especially the facial mask and eye goggle, shall be suggested to residents for SARS-CoV-2 protection in highly polluted regions.

COVID-19 and air pollution in Vienna—a time series approach

“…Indeed, the body of scientific evidence is growing. Several studies so far investigated the impact of spatial differences in air pollution [17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29] and others have looked into short-term temporal air pollution effects [30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37]. Several possible mechanisms have been proposed that would explain associations between acute and chronic air pollution and COVID-19 risk of infection and of mortality [38][39][40][41][42].…”

A First Review to Explore the Association of Air Pollution (PM and NO₂) on Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2)

“…As well as for particulates matter, but the paper of Ma et al, (2020) provides different findings, reporting no association between NO2 and mortality rate in in Wuhan, China. Guan et al (2020) and Zhu et al (2020), by applying the same method explained for PM, observed that the COVID-19 incidence follows a positive pattern association with NO2 in the city of Wuhan (R 2 = 0.329 and p<0.001) and XiaoGa (R 2 =0.158 and p<0.05), and that a 10-μg/m 3 increase (lag0-14)…”

“…First observations report a positive association between ambient concentrations of NO2 and COVID-19 pandemic across Europe, China and U.S.A (Guan et al, 2020;Ogen, 2020;Pansini and Fornacca, 2020;Travaglio et al, 2020;Yao et al, 2020a;Zhu et al, 2020). As well as for particulates matter, but the paper of Ma et al, (2020) provides different findings, reporting no association between NO2 and mortality rate in in Wuhan, China.…”

“…First observations report a positive association between ambient concentrations of PM2.5 (Guan et al, 2020;Pansini and Fornacca, 2020;Wang et al, 2020;Wu et al, 2020;Yao et al, 2020b;Zhu et al, 2020) and PM10 (Coccia, 2020;Guan et al, 2020;Pansini and Fornacca, 2020;Setti et al, 2020;Yao et al, 2020b;Zhu et al, 2020) with COVID-19 pandemic across the most affected countries: China, Italy and U.S.A. Only one research group provides different conclusions (Ma et al, 2020).…”

“…In addition, they found that in all included lag days the effects of PM2.5 on daily-confirmed cases were higher than PM10. Guan et al (2020) with a time-series analysis conducted from Jan 25th to Feb 29th 2020 a retrospective cohort study taking into account COVID-19 incidence in Wuhan and XiaoGan, two worst hit cities in China. Results obtained from the Pearson regression coefficient analysis showed the incidence positively correlated with PM2.5 in both cities (R 2 =0.174 and p<0.02; R 2 =0.23 and p<0.01, respectively), and with PM10 only in XiaoGan (R 2 =0.158 and p<0.05).…”