Adding the variable of environmental complexity into the COVID‐19 pandemic equation

Damialis, Athanasios; Gilles, Stefanie; Traidl‐Hoffmann, Claudia

In a recently published data-orientedstudyin March 2021, a relationship between SARS-CoV-2 infection rates and airborne pollen concentrationswas detected [1]. The studyincluded a data compilation of airborne pollen concentrations and SARS-CoV-2 infection numbers across 31 countries from both hemispheres and all inhabited continents from an inter-disciplinary team consisting of 154 scientists. The salient finding wasa significant and positive correlation between SARS-CoV-2 infection rates and airborne pollen concentrations in the spring of 2020 for the majority of examined countries, in synergy with air temperature and/or relative humidity (Fig. 1).