Two mechanisms for accelerated diffusion of COVID-19 outbreaks in regions with high intensity of population and polluting industrialization: the air pollution-to-human and human-to-human transmission dynamics

Mario Coccia

Millions of people have been quarantined for the first time in Italy and is one of the largest actions in the history of Italy. In addition, Italy applied non-pharmaceutical interventions based on physical distancing, school and store closures, workplace distancing, to avoid crowded places, similarly to the COVID-19 outbreak in Wuhan (cf., Prem et al., 2020) . The benefits to support these measures until April, 2020 are aimed at delaying and reducing the height of epidemic peak, affording health-care systems more time to expand and respond to this emergency and, as a result reducing the final size of COVID-19 epidemic. In general, non-pharmaceutical interventions are important factors to reduce the epidemic peak and the acute pressure on the health-care system (Prem et al., 2020; Fong et al., 2020) .