key: cord-0687722-fwdku0pi
authors: Yao, Ye; Pan, Jinhua; Liu, Zhixi; Meng, Xia; Wang, Weidong; Kan, Haidong; Wang, Weibing
title: Ambient nitrogen dioxide pollution and spread ability of COVID-19 in Chinese cities
date: 2020-04-02
journal: nan
DOI: 10.1101/2020.03.31.20048595
sha: e576a28cb7dd070c9a682b9ab78cbdec10867edc
doc_id: 687722
cord_uid: fwdku0pi

none

. CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license It is made available under a author/funder, who has granted medRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity.

is the (which was not peer-reviewed) The copyright holder for this preprint . https://doi.org/10.1101/2020. 03 CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license It is made available under a author/funder, who has granted medRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity.

is the (which was not peer-reviewed) The copyright holder for this preprint . https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.03.31.20048595 doi: medRxiv preprint

The Coronavirus (COVID-19) epidemic, which was first reported in 1 December 2019 in Wuhan, China, has caused 219,331 confirmed cases as of 20 2 March 2020, with 81,301 cases being reported in China. It has been declared a 3 pandemic by the World Health Organization in 11 March 2020 (1). Although 4 massive intervention measures have been implemented in China (e.g. shutting 5 down cities, extending holidays and travel ban) and many other countries, the 6 spread of the disease are unlikely to be stopped over the world shortly. It is 7 becoming evident that environmental factors are associated with seasonality of 8 respiratory-borne diseases' epidemics (2). Previous studies have suggested that 9 ambient nitrogen dioxide (NO 2 ) exposure may play a role in the phenotypes of 1 0 respiratory diseases, including, but not limited to, influenza, asthma and severe 1 1 acute respiratory syndrome (SARS). NO 2 ), for example, might increase the 1 2 susceptibility of adults to virus infections (3). High exposure to NO 2 before the 1 3 start of a respiratory viral infection is associated with the severity of asthma 1 4 exacerbation (4). This study aims to assess the associations of ambient NO 2 1 5 levels with spread ability of COVID-19 across 63 Chinese cities, and provides We collected COVID-19 confirmed case information reported by the 2 0 . CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license It is made available under a author/funder, who has granted medRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity.

is the (which was not peer-reviewed) The copyright holder for this preprint . https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.03.31.20048595 doi: medRxiv preprint National Health Commission and the Provincial Health Commissions of China. 1 We calculated basic reproduction number (R 0 ) for 63 cities with more than 50 2 cases as of February 10 (COVID-19 peak time in China, including 12 cities in 3 Hubei and 51 cities outside Hubei). The R 0 means the expected number of 4 secondary cases produced by an initial infectious individual, in a completely 5 susceptible population. The calculation process is completed by R software. We conducted a cross-sectional analysis to examine the spatial associations 1 5 of NO 2 with R 0 of COVID-19, and a longitudinal analysis to examine the temporal associations (day-by-day) of NO 2 with R 0 in the cities in Hubei 1 7 province since they had enough confirmed case number to acquire stable daily Hubei. We used multiple linear regression to assess the relationship between the 2 0 spread ability of COVID-19 and NO 2 pollution across the different cities. The cross-sectional analysis shows that, after adjustment for temperature 6 and humidity, the R 0 was positively associated with NO 2 in all cities (χ 2 =10.18, 7 p=0.037). In a following stratified analysis, a significant association was 8 confirmed in the cities outside of Hubei (r=0.29, p=0.046), while it is not the 9 case in the cities inside Hubei (r=0.51, p=0.130) (Figure 1) . We did not find In temporal scale, we calculated daily R 0 of 11 cities in Hubei except Wuhan these cities afterwards), and normalized them based on Wuhan's daily R 0 in 1 5 order to avoid other covariates' effects. We found that the 11 Hubei cities Our study has limitations. Given the ecological nature of study, other city- 1 5 level factors, such as implementation ability of COVID-19 control policy, develop individual based models with high spatial-temporal resolution to assess 1 9 the correlation between air pollution and epidemiologic characteristics of 2 0 . CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license It is made available under a author/funder, who has granted medRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity.

is the (which was not peer-reviewed) The copyright holder for this preprint . https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.03.31.20048595 doi: medRxiv preprint COVID-19. The authors declare no competing interests. . CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license It is made available under a author/funder, who has granted medRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity.

is the (which was not peer-reviewed) The copyright holder for this preprint . https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.03.31.20048595 doi: medRxiv preprint Temperature and humidity effects have been removed during statistical analysis. Xianning all held significant positive correlations (r>0.51, p<0.005) between NO 2 (with 12- 1 1 day time lag) and daily R 0 (normalized based on Wuhan's daily R 0 ). Data collection 1 7 We collected COVID-19 confirmed case information in China reported by 1 8 . CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license It is made available under a author/funder, who has granted medRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity.

is the (which was not peer-reviewed) The copyright holder for this preprint . https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.03.31.20048595 doi: medRxiv preprint

Accuracy 3 of arterial [(18)F]-Fluorodeoxyglucose uptake quantification: A kinetic modeling 4 study

Environmental role in influenza virus outbreaks

the National Health Commission and the Provincial Health Commissions of 1 China. We calculated basic reproduction number (R 0 ) for 63 cities with more 2 than 50 cases as of February 10 (including 12 cities in Hubei and 51 cities 3 outside Hubei). 4 Hourly NO 2 data were obtained from the National Urban Air Quality We conducted a cross-sectional analysis to examine the spatial associations 1 4 of NO 2 with R 0 of COVID-19, and examined the temporal day-by-day 1 5 associations of NO 2 with R 0 in cities of Hubei province since they had enough 1 6 confirmed case number to acquire stable daily R 0 and the other covariates CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license It is made available under a author/funder, who has granted medRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity.is the (which was not peer-reviewed) The copyright holder for this preprint . https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.03.31.20048595 doi: medRxiv preprint cases produced by an initial infectious individual, in a completely susceptible 1 population. if R 0 < 1, then the disease free equilibrium is locally asymptotically 2 stable; whereas if R 0 > 1, then it is unstable. Thus, R 0 is a threshold parameter.

The calculation process is completed by R software. CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license It is made available under a author/funder, who has granted medRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity.is the (which was not peer-reviewed) The copyright holder for this preprint . https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.03.31.20048595 doi: medRxiv preprint