Anticipating the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic

Taranjot Kaur; Sukanta Sarkar; Sourangsu Chowdhury; Sudipta Kumar Sinha; Mohit Kumar Jolly; Partha Sharathi Dutta

Another horizon the infectious coronavirus put forwards is on the quality of air pollution in countries where social distancing/lockdown is enforced. NO 2 , which is majorly emitted from anthropogenic activities like land transportation, industries, and energy sectors, was estimated to decrease in consequence of lockdown measures implemented by the government of respective countries. Population weighted average column NO 2 was found to decrease with amplification in a number of cases across most of the countries. Apart from this, NO 2 column quantities may be used as a proxy to estimate the effectiveness of a lockdown on air quality. We find that NO 2 column quantities started following a decreasing trend during the last week of February in Italy and US which indicate a partial unofficial closure of anthropogenic activities, taking into consideration that the official COVID-19 induced lockdown was enforced on 09 March and around 25 March in Italy and the US, respectively. Whereas, in the UK, an increasing trend in NO 2 column till the last week of March indicates no such public awareness to restrict anthropogenic activities (the government declared the lockdown from 23 March). We acknowledge that the reduction in NO 2 is also associated with the compliance of the population of the individual nation to abide by the lockdown measures.