Abstract
On March 24, 2020, a partial lockdown was decreed in the state of São Paulo, Brazil, as a measure to hinder the spread of COVID-19, which consisted in prohibiting crowding and advising people to stay home, except for urgent or extremely necessary matters. Based on studies performed in other countries, this study aims to assess the impacts of the lockdown on the air quality of five cities in the state of São Paulo. Our study was conducted by using particulate matter and nitrogen dioxide as air quality indicators, and by correlating the contaminants concentrations with weather data. The results showed an increase in these contaminants in all cities within the first weeks after the lockdown compared with the weeks before the decree and with the same period in previous years. This result is inconsistent with the literature. Therefore, a secondary goal was set to investigate the possible cause (or causes) of such deterioration in air quality, which led to the increased number of wildfires. The anomalous dry weather favored the burning of vegetation in agricultural rural areas and in small, vegetated areas near the municipalities, and limited pollution scavenging by rainfall, both of which contributed to higher pollution concentration. We hypothesize the possible effects of worse air quality on the aggravation of COVID-19, but further research is necessary to obtain a complete assessment.
Highlights
Coronaviruses are pathogens that affect animals and humans causing digestive and respiratory diseases
This study aims to assess any impacts the lockdown may have had on the air quality in five cities in the state of São Paulo, and to discuss the possible outcomes of such impacts on COVID-19 cases in these locations
It is noticeable that the concentrations follow approximately the same patterns in all the displayed cities, and that there is a consistent and sharp increase in concentrations for all pollutants from mid-April
Summary
Coronaviruses are pathogens that affect animals and humans causing digestive and respiratory diseases. The origin of the infection was thought to be the civets that were sold in a livestock market One decade later, another outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome, this time in Middle East, was attributed to a novel coronavirus that was named MERS-CoV 4. Several countries and regions around the world have adopted the social distancing policy as an extreme measure to limit the spread of COVID-19 and to flatten the curve of confirmed cases of the disease. This policy often implies measures that range from a small degree of reduction in social interaction to complete lockdown, and its consequences are felt in many ways: economy, sociology, epidemiology, psychology, and others. One of the aspects that have been studied globally is the behavior of air quality during the social distancing period
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