The association between greenness exposure and COVID-19 incidence in South Korea: An ecological study.
Sci Total Environ
; 832: 154981, 2022 Aug 01.
Article
in English
| MEDLINE | ID: covidwho-1768530
ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND:
The rapid spread of COVID-19 has caused an emergency situation worldwide. Investigating the association between environmental characteristics and COVID-19 incidence can be of the occurrence and transmission. The objective of this study was to evaluate the association between greenness exposure and COVID-19 cases at the district levels in South Korea. We also explored this association by considering several environmental indicators.METHODS:
District-level data from across South Korea were used to model the cumulative count of COVID-19 cases per 100,000 persons between January 20, 2020, and February 25, 2021. Greenness exposure data were derived from the Environmental Geographic Information Service of the Korean Ministry of Environment. A negative binomial mixed model evaluated the association between greenness exposure and COVID-19 incidence rate at the district level. Furthermore, we assessed this association between demographic, socioeconomic, environmental statuses, and COVID-19 incidence.RESULTS:
Data from 239 of 250 districts (95.6%) were included in the analyses, resulting in 127.89 COVID-19 cases per 100,000 persons between January 20, 2020 and February 25, 2021. Several demographic and socioeconomic variables, districts with a higher rate of natural greenness exposure, were significantly associated with lower COVID-19 incidence rates (incidence rate ratio (IRR), 0.70; 95% confidence interval (CI), 0.54-0.90; P-value = 0.008) after adjusting covariates, but no evidence for the association between built greenness and COVID-19 incidence rates was found.CONCLUSION:
In this ecological study of South Korea, we found that higher rates of exposure to natural greenness were associated with lower rates of COVID-19 cases.Keywords
Full text:
Available
Collection:
International databases
Database:
MEDLINE
Main subject:
COVID-19
Type of study:
Experimental Studies
/
Observational study
Limits:
Humans
Country/Region as subject:
Asia
Language:
English
Journal:
Sci Total Environ
Year:
2022
Document Type:
Article
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