COVID-19, Air Pollution and Climate Change: The Interaction between the Existential Threats
Misha Roy
Published: January 31, 2022
Abstract
Two years since the COVID-19 pandemic began to sweep the earth, life remains upended, classrooms have sat empty, and families have struggled through health and financial crisis. The pandemic has envisioned the need for a strong foundation of emergency health preparedness to overcome such urgent health impacts of anthropogenic influences on our ecosystem, which emerges in the form of such deadly pandemics. COVID-19, a respiratory infectious disease, originated in China, then spread rapidly to other places of the world to take the shape of a pandemic. Early studies had shown that being in close proximity to anyone who has the disease, increases the risk of infection. The transmission occurs via direct and indirect modes. Direct transmission occurs through SARS-CoV-2 bioaerosol in the form of droplet infection and the indirect mode; it is transferred by surface contact in the immediate environment of an infected patient.