COVID-19 environment pollution
216028019
Indirect effects of COVID 19 on the environment
Abstract This research aims to show the positive and negative indirect effects of COVID 19 on the environment, particularly in the most affected countries such as China, USA, Italy, and Spain. Our research shows that there is a significant association between contingency measures and improvement in air quality, clean beaches and environmental noise reduction. On the other hand, there are also negative secondary aspects such as the reduction in recycling and the increase in waste, further endangering the contamination of physical spaces (water and land) in addition to air. Global economic activity is expected to return in the coming months in most countries (even if slowly) so decreasing GHG concentrations during a short period is not a sustainable way to clean up our environment.
Science of The Total Environment
Manuel A Zambrano-Monserrate Maria Alejandra Ruano Luis Sanchez-Alcalde
216028145
COVID 19 pandemic and environmental pollution: A blessing in disguise?
Abstract In late 2019, a novel infectious disease with human to human transmission (COVID 19) was identified in Wuhan China, which now has turned into a global pandemic. Countries all over the world have implemented some sort of lockdown to slow down its infection and mitigate it. Lockdown due to COVID 19 has drastic effects on social and economic fronts. However, this lockdown also have some positive effect on natural environment. Recent data released by NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) and ESA (European Space Agency) indicates that pollution in some of the epicenters of COVID 19 such as Wuhan, Italy, Spain and USA etc. has reduced up to 30% This study compiled the environmental data released by NASA and ESA before and after the coronavirus pandemic and discusses its impact on environmental quality.
Science of The Total Environment
Sulaman Muhammad Xingle Long Muhammad Salman
216054883
Links between air pollution and COVID 19 in England
In December 2019 a novel disease [coronavirus disease 19 (COVID 19) emerged in the Wuhan province of the People's Republic of China. COVID 19 is caused by a novel coronavirus (SARS CoV 2) thought to have jumped species, from another mammal to humans. A pandemic caused by this virus is running rampant throughout the world. Thousands of cases of COVID 19 are reported in England and over 10,000 patients have died. Whilst there has been progress in managing this disease, it is not clear which factors, besides age, affect the severity and mortality of COVID 19. A recent analysis of COVID 19 in Italy identified links between air pollution and death rates. Here, we explored the correlation between three major air pollutants linked to fossil fuels and SARS CoV 2 lethality in England. We compare up to date, real time SARS CoV 2 cases and death measurements from public databases to air pollution data monitored across over 120 sites in different regions. We found that the levels of some markers of poor air quality, nitrogen oxides and ozone, are associated with COVID 19 lethality in different English regions. We conclude that the levels of some air pollutants are linked to COVID 19 cases and morbidity. We suggest that our study provides a useful framework to guide health policy in countries affected by this pandemic.
medRxiv
Marco Travaglio Rebeka Popovic Liza Selley Nuno Santos Leal
214699650
Mobility traces and spreading of COVID 19
We use human mobility models, for which we are experts, and attach a virus infection dynamics to it, for which we are not experts but have taken it from the literature, including recent publications. This results in a virus spreading dynamics model. The results should be verified, but because of the current time pressure, we publish them in their current state. Recommendations for improvement are welcome. We come to the following conclusions: 1. Complete lockdown works. About 10 days after lockdown, the infection dynamics dies down. This assumes that lockdown is complete, which can be guaranteed in the simulation, but not in reality. Still, it gives strong support to the argument that it is never too late for complete lockdown. 2. As a rule of thumb, we would suggest complete lockdown no later than once 10% of hospital capacities available for COVID 19 are in use, and possibly much earlier. This is based on the following insights: a. Even after lockdown, the infection dynamics continues at home, leading to another tripling of the cases before the dynamics is slowed. b. There will be many critical cases coming from people who were infected before lockdown. Because of the exponential growth dynamics, their number will be large. c. Researchers with more detailed disease progression models should improve upon these statements. 3. Our simulations say that complete removal of infections at child care, primary schools, workplaces and during leisure activities will not be enough to sufficiently slow down the infection dynamics. It would have been better, but still not sufficient, if initiated earlier. 4. Infections in public transport play an important role. In the simulations shown later, removing infections in the public transport system reduces the infection speed and the height of the peak by approximately 20% Evidently, this depends on the infection parameters, which are not well known. This does not point to reducing public transport capacities as a reaction to the reduced demand, but rather use it for lower densities of passengers and thus reduced infection rates. 5. In our simulations, removal of infections at child care, primary schools, workplaces, leisure activities, and in public transport may barely have been sufficient to control the infection dynamics if implemented early on. Now according to our simulations it is too late for this, and (even) harsher measures will have to be initiated until possibly a return to such a restrictive, but still somewhat functional regime will again be possible. Evidently, all of these results have to be taken with care. They are based on preliminary infection parameters taken from the literature, used inside a model that has more transport/movement details than all others that we are aware of but still not enough to describe all aspects of reality, and suffer from having to write computer code under time pressure. Optimally, they should be confirmed independently. Short of that, given current knowledge we believe that they provide justification for "complete lockdown" at the latest when about 10% of available hospital capacities for COVID 19 are in use (and possibly earlier; we are no experts of hospital capabilities) What was not investigated in detail in our simulations was contact tracing, i.e. tracking down the infection chains and moving all people along infection chains into quarantine. The case of Singapore has so far shown that this may be successful. Preliminary simulation of that tactic shows that it is difficult to implement for COVID 19, since the incubation time is rather long, people are contagious before they feel sick, or maybe never feel sufficiently sick at all. We will investigate in future work if and how contact tracing can be used together with a restrictive, but not totally locked down regime. When opening up after lockdown, it would be important to know the true fraction of people who are already immune, since that would slow down the infection dynamics by itself. For Wuhan, the currently available numbers report that only about 0.1% of the population was infected, which would be very far away from "herd immunity" However, there have been and still may be many unknown infections.
medRxiv
Sebastian Alexander Muller Michael Balmer Andreas Neumann Kai Nagel
215769720
Association between short term exposure to air pollution and COVID 19 infection: Evidence from China
Abstract The novel coronavirus pneumonia, namely COVID 19, has become a global public health problem. Previous studies have found that air pollution is a risk factor for respiratory infection by carrying microorganisms and affecting body's immunity. This study aimed to explore the relationship between ambient air pollutants and the infection caused by the novel coronavirus. Daily confirmed cases, air pollution concentration and meteorological variables in 120 cities were obtained from January 23, 2020 to February 29, 2020 in China. We applied a generalized additive model to investigate the associations of six air pollutants (PM2.5, PM10, SO2, CO, NO2 and O3) with COVID 19 confirmed cases. We observed significantly positive associations of PM2.5, PM10, NO2 and O3 in the last two weeks with newly COVID 19 confirmed cases. A 10 mg/m3 increase (lag0 14) in PM2.5, PM10, NO2, and O3 was associated with a 2.24% (95% CI: 1.02 to 3.46) 1.76% (95% CI: 0.89 to 2.63) 6.94% (95% CI: 2.38 to 11.51) and 4.76% (95% CI: 1.99 to 7.52) increase in the daily counts of confirmed cases, respectively. However, a 10 mg/m3 increase (lag0 14) in SO2 was associated with a 7.79% decrease (95% CI: 14.57 to 1.01) in COVID 19 confirmed cases. Our results indicate that there is a significant relationship between air pollution and COVID 19 infection, which could partially explain the effect of national lockdown and provide implications for the control and prevention of this novel disease.
Science of The Total Environment
Yongjian Zhu Jingui Xie Fengming Huang Liqing Cao
216556616
Environmental perspective of COVID 19
Abstract The outbreak of COVID 19 has caused concerns globally. On 30 January WHO has declared it as a global health emergency. The easy spread of this virus made people to wear a mask as precautionary route, use gloves and hand sanitizer on a daily basis that resulted in generation of a massive amount of medical wastes in the environment. Millions of people have been put on lockdown in order to reduce the transmission of the virus. This epidemic has also changed the people's life style; caused extensive job losses and threatened the sustenance of millions of people, as businesses have shut down to control the spread of virus. All over the world, flights have been canceled and transport systems have been closed. Overall, the economic activities have been stopped and stock markets dropped along with the falling carbon emission. However, the lock down of the COVID 19 pandemic caused the air quality in many cities across the globe to improve and drop in water pollutions in some parts of the world.
Science of The Total Environment
Saeida Saadat Deepak Rawtani Chaudhery Mustansar Hussain
215769725
Areas of academic research with the impact of COVID 19
Abstract Coronavirus (COVID 19) endemic is growing exponentially in the whole world. Researchers, technologists, doctors and other healthcare workers are working day and night on the development of vaccine and medicinesto control and treat this virus. SARS CoV 2 is the name of the virus responsible for causing COVID 19 disease, which is highly infectious and lethal.With exponentially increasing infections, proportionate fatalities are being reported both from developed and under developed countries. As of today, more than one million people across the world have been reported infected with this virus, and more than 65,000 people have died of this disease. Hence, there is an urgent requirement for conducting academic research on several aspects of this highly contagious disease, to find effective means of containment and treatment of the disease, for now, and in future. We have identified some opportunities for academic research related to COVID 19 and have also provided suggestions to contain, prevent and treat this viral infection.
The American Journal of Emergency Medicine
Abid Haleem Mohd Javaid Raju Vaishya S G Deshmukh
215782038
Exposure to air pollution and COVID 19 mortality in the United States: A nationwide cross sectional study
Objectives: United States government scientists estimate that COVID 19 may kill tens of thousands of Americans. Many of the pre existing conditions that increase the risk of death in those with COVID 19 are the same diseases that are affected by long term exposure to air pollution. We investigated whether long term average exposure to fine particulate matter (PM2.5) is associated with an increased risk of COVID 19 death in the United States. Design: A nationwide, cross sectional study using county level data. Data sources: COVID 19 death counts were collected for more than 3,000 counties in the United States (representing 98% of the population) up to April 22, 2020 from Johns Hopkins University, Center for Systems Science and Engineering Coronavirus Resource Center. Main outcome measures: We fit negative binomial mixed models using county level COVID 19 deaths as the outcome and county level long term average of PM2.5 as the exposure. In the main analysis, we adjusted by 20 potential confounding factors including population size, age distribution, population density, time since the beginning of the outbreak, time since state issuance of the stay at home order, hospital beds, number of individuals tested, weather, and socioeconomic and behavioral variables such as obesity and smoking. We included a random intercept by state to account for potential correlation in counties within the same state. We conducted more than 68 additional sensitivity analyses. Results: We found that an increase of only 1 mg/m3 in PM2.5 is associated with an 8% increase in the COVID 19 death rate (95% confidence interval [CI] 2% 15% The results were statistically significant and robust to secondary and sensitivity analyses. Conclusions: A small increase in long term exposure to PM2.5 leads to a large increase in the COVID 19 death rate. Despite the inherent limitations of the ecological study design, our results underscore the importance of continuing to enforce existing air pollution regulations to protect human health both during and after the COVID 19 crisis. The data and code are publicly available so our analyses can be updated routinely.
medRxiv
Xiao Wu Rachel C Nethery Benjamin M Sabath Danielle Braun Francesca Dominici
215782037
COVID 19, City Lockdown, and Air Pollution: Evidence from China
The rapid spread of COVID 19 is a global public health challenge. To prevent the escalation of its transmission, China locked down one third of its cities and strictly restricted human mobility and economic activities. Using timely and comprehensive air quality data in China, we show that these counter COVID 19 measures led to remarkable improvement in air quality. Within weeks, the Air Quality Index and PM2.5 concentrations were brought down by 25% The effects are larger in colder, richer, and more industrialized cities. We estimate that such improvement would avert 24,000 to 36,000 premature deaths from air pollution on a monthly basis.
medRxiv
Guojun He Yuhang Pan Takanao Tanaka
216339625
COVID 19 Cure Technique
The cure presents in this study is course of techniques depend on three methods to neutralize the virus threat's in both sides to prevent it from replication and mutation as the principle acknowledge the speed time of recovery and show the weakness parts in the virus itself by using effective strategy. T he cure include three specific procedure first step is to attack both infected cells and the virus molecules with plasma represented in ionic treatment by ionizing the air inside lung and allow the Zinc particles to attack the infected cells membrane which diffused in the body, second step supply and stimulate the immune system in order to complete the attack of the virus by changing the environment required for replication then destroy the damaged cells in order to force the virus to shrink finally the last step is to evacuate the body from the trash of the virus by using organic antioxidants plants help in extract mucus of dead viruses that technique is highly recommended to dismiss the dead virus bodies outside the patients and that will help to kill the virus and avoid it's side effects in the long term as it is not confirmed that the virus mutate to latency stage then back to attack the body again specially there is no evidence for the full recovery of the patients as the tests done after a while and some of them return to positive results again which lead to some of them suffering from the virus again after recovery in addition to the randomly behavior of the virus that has been shown in the European countries unlike the Chinese virus which put the world in obstacle of speed mutation and that is so dangerous if we put in our consideration the huge numbers of the infected and dead persons, the strategy strongly remark the weakness points in the virus in order to neutralize it even in the late stages for the patients who suffering from immunity issues as the benefits from Cure can recover the actual infected and realistic for the numbers of the persons infected unlike the vaccine that required to be injected for billions of people
Rimon Adel Louis