Nonlinearity in the relationship between COVID-19 cases and carbon damages: controlling financial development, green energy, and R&D expenditures for shared prosperity.

The world faces a high alert of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), leading to a million deaths and could become infected to reach a billion numbers. A sizeable amount of scholarly work has been available on different aspects of social-economic and environmental factors. At the same time, many of these studies found the linear (direct) causation between the stated factors. In many cases, the direct relationship is not apparent. The world is unsure about the possible determining factors of the COVID-19 pandemic, which need to be known through conducting nonlinearity (indirect) relationships, which caused the pandemic crisis. The study examined the nonlinear relationship between COVID-19 cases and carbon damages, managing financial development, renewable energy consumption, and innovative capability in a cross section of 65 countries. The results show that inbound foreign direct investment first increases and later decreases because of the increasing coronavirus cases. Further, the rise and fall in the research and development expenditures and population density exhibits increasing coronavirus cases across countries. The continued economic growth initial decreases later increase by adopting standardized operating procedures to contain coronavirus disease. The inter-temporal relationship shows that green energy source and carbon damages would likely influence the coronavirus cases with a variance of 17.127% and 5.440%, respectively, over a time horizon. The policymakers should be carefully designing sustainable healthcare policies, as the cost of carbon emissions leads to severe healthcare issues, which are likely to get exposed to contagious diseases, including COVID-19. The sustainable policy instruments, including renewable fuels in industrial production, advancement in cleaner production technologies, the imposition of carbon taxes on dirty production, and environmental certifications, are a few possible remedies that achieve healthcare sustainability agenda globally.

The impact of coal combustion, nitrous oxide emissions, and traffic emissions on COVID-19 cases: a Markov-switching approach.

The severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) spread to more than 200 countries with a current case fatality ratio (CFR) of more than 2% globally. The concentration of air pollutants is considered a critical factor responsible for transmitting coronavirus disease among the masses. The photochemical process and coal combustions create respiratory disorders that lead to coronavirus disease. Based on the crucial fact, the study evaluated the impact of nitrous oxide (N2O) emissions, coal combustion, and traffic emissions on COVID-19 cases in a panel of 39 most affected countries of the world. These three air pollution factors are considered to form a lethal smog that negatively affects the patient's respiratory system, leading to increased susceptibility to coronavirus worldwide. The study used the Markov two-step switching regime regression model for obtaining parameter estimates. In contrast, an innovation accounting matrix is used to assess smog factors' intensity on possibly increasing coronavirus cases over time. The results show that N2O emissions, coal combustion, and traffic emissions increase COVID-19 cases in regime-1. On the other hand, N2O emissions significantly increase coronavirus cases in regime-2. The innovation accounting matrix shows that N2O emissions would likely have a more significant share of increasing coronavirus cases with a variance of 33.902%, followed by coal combustion (i.e., 6.643%) and traffic emissions (i.e., 2.008%) over the time horizon. The study concludes that air quality levels should be maintained through stringent environmental policies, such as carbon pricing, sustainable urban planning, green technology advancement, renewable fuels, and pollution less accessible vehicles. All these measures would likely decrease coronavirus cases worldwide.