Citing a report linking air pollution to higher mortality in Covid-19 cases, the government said Tuesday that studies in Europe and the United States have established a connection between Covid mortality and pollution.
Professor Balram Bhargava, director general of the Indian Council for Medical Research, said that there is indeed a connection between PM2.5 particles and that the coronavirus has been found in these suspended particles. “He could also be dead,” he told News18.
Bhargava was referring to the study conducted by researchers at the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health in Boston. The analysis was conducted in 3,000 US counties covering 98% of the population. The study found that an increase of just 1 μg / m3 in PM2.5 particles is associated with a 15% increase in the death rate from Covid-19.
A 2003 ecological study in China had shown that among five regions with 100 or more SARS cases, the fatality rate increased with worsening air pollution. In this study, the relationship between air pollution and SARS lethality was explored using an ecological study design.
Another study conducted in Italy had found that air pollution was a major cofactor in the extremely high lethality level of SARS-CoV-2 in the northern part of the country. “The high level of contamination in northern Italy should be considered an additional cofactor of the high level of fatality recorded in that area,” the study concluded.
A study by researchers at Harvard University in the US in September showed that an increase of just one microgram per cubic meter in PM 2.5 is associated with an 8 percent increase in the death rate from Covid-19. .
“Given the current limited literature, increased PM2.5 level in Delhi may be associated with increased Covid-19 cases … Although literature is relatively sparse at this stage,” Xiao Wu, corresponding author of the study from Harvard, he told the PTI news agency.
Controlling pollution in that sense would also lead to saving people from dying from COVID 19 in the most polluted cities in India, with the national capital being one of the most affected.
India also tops the list of the 10 countries with the highest weighted average exposure to particulate matter. One hundred percent of Indians breathe toxic air, suggests a report called State of Global Air 2020.
India has been hit hard by the pandemic, with the second highest number of cases in the world. Although India’s death rate has been among the lowest in the world, the absolute figures are high, 1.20,000.
“The rapid adoption of masks is the most economical but effective approach to this situation,” said Professor Bhargava.
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