Climate indicators and COVID-19 recovery: A case of Wuhan during the lockdown.

Zhai Shuai,Bilal Bilal,Najaf Iqbal,Yong Yan,Rai Imtiaz Hussain,Farrukh Shahzad,Zeeshan Fareed

doi:10.1007/s10668-021-01794-2

Abstract

The world needs to get out of the COVID-19 pandemic smoothly through a thorough socio-economic recovery. The first and the foremost step forward in this direction is the health recovery of the people infected. Our empirical study addresses this neglected point in the recent research on COVID-19 and specifically aims at exploring the impact of the environment on health recovery from COVID-19. The sample data are taken during the lockdown period in Wuhan, i.e., from 23rd January 2020 to 8th April 2020. The recently developed econometric technique of Quantile-on-Quantile regression, proposed by Shin and Zhu (2016) is employed to capture the asymmetric association between environmental factors (TEMP, HUM, PM2.5, PM10, CO, SO2, NO2, and O3) and the number of recovered patients from COVID-19. We observe significant heterogeneity in the association among variables across various quantiles. The findings suggest that TEMP, PM2.5, PM10, CO, NO2, and O3 are negatively related to the COVID-19 recovery, while HUM and SO2 show a positive association at most quantiles. The study recommends that maintaining a safe and comfortable environment for the patients may increase the chances of recovery from COVID-19. The success story of Wuhan, the initial epicenter of the novel coronavirus in China, can serve as an important case study for other countries to bring the outbreak under control. The current study could be conducive for the policymakers of those countries where the COVID-19 pandemic is still unrestrained.

Highlights

The recent outbreak of COVID-19 disease throughout the world has created unprecedented uncertainty in each and every sector of the economy, politics, and public health (Ali et al, 2021; Bashir et al, 2020; Fareed & Iqbal, 2020; Iqbal et al, 2020a, 2020b; Irfan et al, 2021; Latif et al, 2020; Yan et al, 2021)
While there is a fierce debate about creating a balance between public health and economic recovery in case of any policy formulation including lockdowns, we believe that the health/medical recovery of the COVID-19 patients must be considered the most critical step forward in this long process
The average temperature is 11.34 °C, which shows that Wuhan was a little colder during the epidemic

Summary

Introduction

The recent outbreak of COVID-19 disease throughout the world has created unprecedented uncertainty in each and every sector of the economy, politics, and public health (Ali et al, 2021; Bashir et al, 2020; Fareed & Iqbal, 2020; Iqbal et al, 2020a, 2020b; Irfan et al, 2021; Latif et al, 2020; Yan et al, 2021). As COVID-19 pandemic is slowing down in many countries of the world recently, the efforts to develop a vaccine or cure are entering a crucial stage. While there is a fierce debate about creating a balance between public health and economic recovery in case of any policy formulation including lockdowns, we believe that the health/medical recovery of the COVID-19 patients must be considered the most critical step forward in this long process. There is no price/alternative of even a single human life, and there would be no economy without a healthy public

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Conclusion