Nexus Between the COVID-19 Dynamics and Environmental Pollution Indicators in South America.

INTRODUCTION: In the current context of the COVID-19 pandemic, researchers are working with health professionals to inform governments to slow the virus's spread. The extant research contribution has been dedicated to examining the impact of climate indicators such as temperature, humidity, and rainfall. However, there is a lack of evidence regarding their combined association between environmental quality and climate indicators to combat COVID-19 in the South American context. METHODS: In this study, we collected data for environmental pollution indicators for the South America region, and correlation analysis and wavelet transform coherence were used as the analytical tools. RESULTS: Empirical estimates conclude that PM10, NO2, CO, and O3 are significant factors in the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic in South America. IMPLICATIONS: Our findings will serve as policy implications for the state, health officials, and regulators to combat the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak in South America.

Environmental pollution and COVID-19 outbreak: insights from Germany.

The impact of environmental pollutants and climate indicators on the outbreak of COVID-19 has gained considerable attention in the recent literature. However, specific investigation of industrial economies like Germany is not available. This provides us motivation to examine the association between environmental pollutants, climate indicators and the COVID-19 cases, recoveries, and deaths in Germany using daily data from February 24, 2020, to July 02, 2020. The correlation analysis and wavelet transform coherence (WTC) approach are the analytical tools, which are used to explore the association between variables included in the study. Our findings indicate that PM2.5, O3, and NO2 have a significant relationship with the outbreak of COVID-19. In addition, temperature is the only significant climate indicator which has significant correlation with the spread of COVID-19. Finally, PM10, humidity, and environmental quality index have a significant relationship only with the active cases from COVID-19 pandemic. Our findings conclude that Germany's successful response to COVID-19 is attributed to environmental legislation and the medical care system, which oversaw significant overhaul after the SARS and MERS outbreaks. The current study implicates that other industrial economies, especially European economies, that are still facing COVID-19 outbreak can follow the German model for pandemic response.