COVID-19 and air pollution in Vienna—a time series approach

We performed a time series analysis in Vienna, Austria, investigating the temporal association between daily air pollution (nitrogen dioxide, NO(2) and particulate matter smaller than 10 µm, PM10) concentration and risk of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) infection and death. Data covering about 2 months (March–April 2020) were retrieved from public databases. Infection risk was defined as the ratio between infected and infectious. In a separate sensitivity analysis different models were applied to estimate the number of infectious people per day. The impact of air pollution was assessed through a linear regression on the natural logarithm of infection risk. Risk of COVID-19 mortality was estimated by Poisson regression. Both pollutants were positively correlated with the risk of infection with the coefficient for NO(2) being 0.032 and for PM10 0.014. That association was significant for the irritant gas (p = 0.012) but not for particles (p = 0.22). Pollutants did not affect COVID-19-related mortality. The study findings might have wider implications on an interaction between air pollution and infectious agents.