An Index to Quantify Environmental Risk of Exposure to Future Epidemics of the COVID-19 and Similar Viral Agents: Theory and Practice

Environmental Research, Article number 110155, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envres.2020.110155

25 Pages Posted: 22 Sep 2020

See all articles by Mario Coccia

Mario Coccia

National Research Council of Italy (CNR)

Date Written: September 15, 2020

Abstract

As there is no vaccine and appropriate drugs for treatment of the novel Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19), one of the fundamental problems is the evaluation of environmental and social weaknesses of cities/regions to the exposure of infectious diseases for preventing and/or containing new COVID-19 outbreaks and of other viral agents that generate negative impact on public health and economy of countries. The current monitoring of transmission dynamics of infectious diseases is mainly based on reproduction number (R0) and fatality rates. However, this approach is a real-time monitoring of transmission dynamics for mitigating the numbers of COVID-19 related infected individuals and deaths. Reproduction number does not provide information to cope with future epidemics or pandemic. The main goal of this study is to propose the index c (as contagions) that quantifies, ex-ante, the environmental risk of exposure of cities/regions to future epidemics of the COVID-19 and similar vital agents. This index c synthetizes environmental, demographic, climatological and health risk factors of cities/regions that assess their exposure to infectious diseases. Index c has a range from 1 (environmental and social weakness of the urban area leading to high levels of exposure to infectious diseases and deaths) to 0 (environment that reduces the risk of exposure to infectious diseases in society). The statistical evidence here, applied on case study of Italy, seems in general to support the predictive capacity of the index c as a particularly simple but superior indicator in detecting the global correlation between potential risk of exposure of cities/regions to infectious diseases and actual risk given by infected individuals and deaths of the COVID-19. The index c can support a proactive environmental strategy to help policymakers firstly to prevent future pandemic similar to the COVID-19 and, in case of diffusion of infectious disease beyond the initial outbreak, to constrain infected individuals and deaths with appropriate control measures of containment and mitigation in society.

Note: Funding: This study has none funders.

Conflict of Interest: The author declares that he is the sole author of this manuscript and he has no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Keywords: COVID-19, Coronavirus Infections, SARS-CoV-2, Infectious diseases, Air Pollution, Wind Speed, Density of Population, Lung Cancer, Public Health, Environment and Health, Natural Hazards, Risk Assessment, Urban Environment

JEL Classification: C43, C53, D81, I10, K32, Q51, Q55

Suggested Citation

Coccia, Mario, An Index to Quantify Environmental Risk of Exposure to Future Epidemics of the COVID-19 and Similar Viral Agents: Theory and Practice (September 15, 2020). Environmental Research, Article number 110155, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envres.2020.110155, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3694394 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3694394

Mario Coccia (Contact Author)

National Research Council of Italy (CNR) ( email )

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Italy
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+390116824966 (Fax)

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