Impact of long-term exposure to PM2.5 and temperature on coronavirus disease mortality: observed trends in France.

BACKGROUND: The outbreak of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) began in Wuhan, China in December 2019 and was declared a global pandemic on 11 March 2020. This study aimed to assess the effects of temperature and long-term exposure to air pollution on the COVID-19 mortality rate at the sub-national level in France. METHODS: This cross-sectional study considered different periods of the COVID-19 pandemic from May to December 2020. It included 96 departments (or NUTS 3) in mainland France. Data on long-term exposure to particulate matter (PM2.5), annual mean temperature, health services, health risk, and socio-spatial factors were used as covariates in negative binomial regression analysis to assess their influence on the COVID-19 mortality rate. All data were obtained from open-access sources. RESULTS: The cumulative COVID-19 mortality rate by department increased during the study period in metropolitan France-from 19.8/100,000 inhabitants (standard deviation (SD): 20.1) on 1 May 2020, to 65.4/100,000 inhabitants (SD: 39.4) on 31 December 2020. The rate was the highest in the departments where the annual average of long-term exposure to PM2.5 was high. The negative binomial regression models showed that a 1 µg/m3 increase in the annual average PM2.5 concentration was associated with a statistically significant increase in the COVID-19 mortality rate, corresponding to 24.4%, 25.8%, 26.4%, 26.7%, 27.1%, 25.8%, and 15.1% in May, June, July, August, September, October, and November, respectively. This association was no longer significant on 1 and 31 December 2020. The association between temperature and the COVID-19 mortality rate was only significant on 1 November, 1 December, and 31 December 2020. An increase of 1 °C in the average temperature was associated with a decrease in the COVID-19-mortality rate, corresponding to 9.7%, 13.3%, and 14.5% on 1 November, 1 December, and 31 December 2020, respectively. CONCLUSION: This study found significant associations between the COVID-19 mortality rate and long-term exposure to air pollution and temperature. However, these associations tended to decrease with the persistence of the pandemic and massive spread of the disease across the entire country.

COVID-19 in Europe: Dataset at a sub-national level.

The COVID-19 pandemic has hit humanity, straining health care systems, economies, and governments worldwide. In one of the responses to the pandemic, a big global effort has been mounted to collect, analyze, and make data publicly available. However, many of the existing COVID-19 public datasets are (i) aggregated at country level, and (ii) tend not to bring the COVID-19-specific data coupled with socio-demographic, economic, public policy, health, pollution and environmental factors, all of which may be key elements to study the transmission of the SARS-CoV-2 and its severity. To aid the evaluation of the determinants and impact of the COVID-19 pandemic at a large scale, we present here a new dataset with socio-demographic, economic, public policy, health, pollution and environmental factors for the European Union at the small regions level (NUTS3). The database is freely accessible at http://dx.doi.org/10.17632/2ghxnrkr9p.4. This dataset can help to monitor the COVID-19 mortality and infections at the sub-national level and enable analysis that may inform future policymaking.