County-level exposures to greenness and associations with COVID-19 incidence and mortality in the United States

Klompmaker, Jochem O.; Hart, Jaime E.; Holland, Isabel; Sabath, M.Benjamin; Wu, Xiao; Laden, Francine; Dominici, Francesca; James, Peter

BACKGROUND: COVID-19 is an infectious disease that has killed more than 555,000 people in the US. During a time of social distancing measures and increasing social isolation, green spaces may be a crucial factor to maintain a physically and socially active lifestyle while not increasing risk of infection. OBJECTIVES: We evaluated whether greenness was related to COVID-19 incidence and mortality in the US. METHODS: We downloaded data on COVID-19 cases and deaths for each US county up through June 7, 2020, from Johns Hopkins University, Center for Systems Science and Engineering Coronavirus Resource Center. We used April–May 2020 Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) data, to represent the greenness exposure during the initial COVID-19 outbreak in the US. We fitted negative binomial mixed models to evaluate associations of NDVI with COVID-19 incidence and mortality, adjusting for potential confounders such as county-level demographics, epidemic stage, and other environmental factors. We evaluated whether the associations were modified by population density, proportion of Black residents, median home value, and issuance of stay-at-home orders. RESULTS: An increase of 0.1 in NDVI was associated with a 6% (95% Confidence Interval: 3%, 10%) decrease in COVID-19 incidence rate after adjustment for potential confounders. Associations with COVID-19 incidence were stronger in counties with high population density and in counties with stay-at-home orders. Greenness was not associated with COVID-19 mortality in all counties; however, it was protective in counties with higher population density. DISCUSSION: Exposures to NDVI were associated with reduced county-level incidence of COVID-19 in the US as well as reduced county-level COVID-19 mortality rates in densely populated counties.