Title: Investigating the Relationship Between Air Quality and COVID-19 Transmission

Abstract:

Long-term subjection to air pollutants has been shown to negatively impact respiratory health, and short-term exposure to poor air quality may influence the transmission of airborne pathogens. One theory proposes that viruses and bacteria may attach to particles suspended in the air and infect susceptible people when inhaled. It is hypothesized that this may be a potential transmission mechanism of COVID-19. In order to study this possible relationship, we gathered daily COVID-19 case and test counts, Google mobility data, as well as air quality and meteorological data from twenty-five cities in Italy from February 24, 2020 to August 1, 2020. We used two different open-source methods to calculate the effective transmission rate in these cities in order to estimate the transmission of the disease on each day. We then built a generalized additive model to investigate the association between the effective transmission rate and air quality while controlling for meteorological variables and changes in human mobility. The model finds a positive relationship between the density of particulate matter in the air and COVID-19 transmission when air quality is sufficiently poor, which is in alignment with similar studies on other respiratory illnesses.