The spread of 2019-nCoV in China was primarily driven by population density. Comment on 'Association between short-term exposure to air pollution and COVID-19 infection: Evidence from China' by Zhu et al.

摘要

The outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic (Cheng and Shan, 2020) has stimulated a multitude of studies on the topic over just a few months. Yet a few of them go beyond the clinical scope and try to deal with other epidemiological aspects. However, both the earlier literature on other viruses and some recent studies on the novel coronavirus have examined the likely relationship between socioeconomic and environmental conditions and the diffusion of pandemics. In particular, those studies point to the role potentially played by weather conditions (Iqbal et al., 2020; Sobral et al., 2020), transportation (Adda, 2016; Jia et al., 2020), economic activity (Sarmadi et al., 2020), and air pollution (Coccia, 2020; Conticini et al„ 2020). As far as the latter aspect is concerned, it is worth noting that pollution emissions are already known to be associated with respiratory viral infections (Becker and Soukup, 1999; Ciencewicki and Jaspers, 2007; Cui et al., 2003; Home et al., 2018; Mehta et al., 2013; Xu et al., 2016; Ye et al., 2016). Recently, an article published in the journal Science of the Total Environment has supported the "Association between short-term exposure to air pollution and COVID-19 infection" (Zhu et al., 2020) based on an analysis of 120 Chinese cities using a generalized additive model. The authors find "significantly positive associations of PM_(2.5), PM_(10), CO, NO_2 and O_3 with COVID-19 confirmed cases" (p. 3).