COVID-19 and air pollution in Vienna—a time series approach

Summary We performed a time series analysis in Vienna, Austria, investigating the temporal association between daily air pollution (nitrogen dioxide, NO 2 and particulate matter smaller than 10 µm, PM10) concentration and risk of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) infection and death. Data covering about 2 months (March–April 2020) were retrieved from public databases. Infection risk was defined as the ratio between infected and infectious. In a separate sensitivity analysis different models were applied to estimate the number of infectious people per day. The impact of air pollution was assessed through a linear regression on the natural logarithm of infection risk. Risk of COVID-19 mortality was estimated by Poisson regression. Both pollutants were positively correlated with the risk of infection with the coefficient for NO 2 being 0.032 and for PM10 0.014. That association was significant for the irritant gas ( p = 0.012) but not for particles ( p = 0.22). Pollutants did not affect COVID-19-related mortality. The study findings might have wider implications on an interaction between air pollution and infectious agents.

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