INVESTIGATING THE IMPACTS OF AIR QUALITY AND WEATHER INDICATORS ON THE SPREAD OF SARS-CoV-2 IN ISTANBUL, TURKEY

Air pollution is having a positive impact on the spread of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. The effects of meteorological parameters on the spread of SARS-CoV-2 are a matter of curiosity. The main purpose of this paper is to determine the association between air quality indexes (PM2.5, PM10, NO2, SO2, CO, and O3) and weather parameters (temperature, humidity, pressure, dew, and wind speed) with the number of SARS-CoV-2 cases, hospitalizations, hospital discharges. In this paper, we also focused on determining the impact of air pollution and weather parameters on the number of daily hospitalizations and daily discharges. It is gleaned daily cases, hospitalizations, hospital discharges, meteorological, and air quality data in Istanbul from Turkey between July 15, 2020, and September 30, 2020. We performed the Pearson correlation analysis to evaluate the effects of meteorological parameters and air quality indexes on the variables related to SARS-CoV-2. It is determined a statistically significant positive relationship between air quality indexes such as CO, SO2, PM2.5, PM10, NO2, and the number of daily confirmed SARS-CoV-2 cases. We also observed a negative association between weather parameters such as temperature and pressure and the number of daily confirmed SARS-CoV-2 cases. Our study proposes that high air quality could reduce the number of SARS-CoV-2 cases. The empirical findings of this paper might provide key input to prevent the spread of SARS-CoV-2 across Turkey.