Relação entre a poluição do ar e a Covid-19 em Belo Horizonte, Brasil

Abstract

The study aimed to correlate the numbers of confirmed COVID-19 cases and pollution (pm10, pm2.5, NO2, O3, SO2 and SO) in the periods of the first and second waves (08/03/2020 to 31/10/202 and 01/11/2020 to 17/04/2021). To this end, COVID-19 data were collected from the Epidemiological Bulletin of the Belo Horizonte City Hall and air pollution data from the platform of the State Environmental Foundation of Minas Gerais (FEAM). We analyzed the panoramic profile of confirmed cases of COVID-19 for the first and second waves. Then, the statistical tests were performed, and the analysis was performed using the Generalized Additive Model (GAM), which allowed modeling the results according to the nonlinear smoothing functions of the predictors. Cubic splines are among the nonlinear functions commonly used in this context. The GAM function developed in XLSTAT-R called the gam function of the mgcv package in R (Simon Wood). For the parameters pm2.5, pm10 and CO, they showed a significant association with COVID-19 cases, whereby COVID-19 cases showed a growth in conjunction with the air pollutant pm2.5 and pm10, while for CO there was a decrease with confirmed cases of COVID-19. It is important to emphasize that the results obtained are particularly for the city of Belo Horizonte, because each region has its peculiarity. Thus, we cannot conclude as the only cause-and-effect relationship between the pollution parameter and COVID-19 data.