Are environmental pollution and biodiversity levels associated to the spread and mortality of COVID-19? A four-month global analysis

Abstract

On March 12th, 2020, the WHO declared COVID-19 as a pandemic. The collective impact of environ-mental and ecosystem factors, as well as biodiversity, on the spread of COVID-19 and its mortalityevolution remain empirically unknown, particularly in regions with a wide ecosystem range. The aim ofour study is to assess how those factors impact on the COVID-19 spread and mortality by country. Thisstudy compiled a global database merging WHO daily case reports with other publicly available measuresfrom January 21st to May 18th, 2020. We applied spatio-temporal models to identify the influence ofbiodiversity, temperature, and precipitation andfitted generalized linear mixed models to identify theeffects of environmental variables. Additionally, we used count time series to characterize the associationbetween COVID-19 spread and air quality factors. All analyses were adjusted by social demographic,country-income level, and government policy intervention confounders, among 160 countries, globally.Our results reveal a statistically meaningful association between COVID-19 infection and several factorsof interest at country and city levels such as the national biodiversity index, air quality, and pollutantselements (PM10,PM2.5,and O3). Particularly, there is a significant relationship of loss of biodiversity, highlevel of air pollutants, and diminished air quality with COVID-19 infection spread and mortality. Ourfindings provide an empirical foundation for future studies on the relationship between air qualityvariables, a country's biodiversity, and COVID-19 transmission and mortality. The relationships measuredin this study can be valuable when governments plan environmental and health policies, as alternativestrategy to respond to new COVID-19 outbreaks and prevent future crises ; Daniel Fernández supported by grant 2017 SGR 622 (GRBIO) administrated by the Departament d'Economia i Coneixement de la Generalitat de Catalunya (Spain) ; Peer Reviewed ; Postprint (author's final draft)