Objective and perceived acoustic environments during the COVID-19 lockdown: An overview of evidence

The COVID-19 pandemic took a heavy toll on population health directly, but also triggered profound changes to social life, daily mobility patterns, and activity spaces. At the beginning, public health measures for limiting the spread of the virus mandated home confinement and limited outdoor activities, which in turn reshaped typical acoustic environments for many people. This overview provides a synopsis of the evidence of changes to residential noise exposure and perceived soundscape quality and components across different contexts. Most studies reported sound level reductions in the range of 4-10 dB. Reductions were larger on weekends compared with weekdays, and in previously socially active areas compared with traffic-dominated locations. People had a clear preference for the new lockdown soundscapes. Traffic noise levels reportedly declined across various settings, allowing for natural sounds, hitherto masked, to become more prominent. © 2022 Internoise 2022 - 51st International Congress and Exposition on Noise Control Engineering. All rights reserved.

Exposure to nature during the COVID-19 pandemic and the associated effect on mental health: a systematic review with meta-analysis

BACKGROUND: The COVID-19 pandemic and measures such as lockdowns to control its transmission generated unique effects on psychological health and well-being. In these circumstances, access to nature and outdoor spaces became a potentially important coping strategy, but the evidence exploring the mental health benefits of nature exposure during different stages of the pandemic is mixed and poorly understood. We systematically synthesised the evidence to examine larger trends in associations between nature exposure and mental health during the COVID-19 pandemic.