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Impact of SARS-CoV-2 variants on mobility and air pollution in the United Kingdom

During the two years following the first case of COVID-19 in the United Kingdom, cycles of social restrictions were imposed to control the spread of the virus. These measures curtailed social contact and halted commercial and recreational activities affecting levels of air pollutants. As society ada...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Acosta-Ramírez, C., Higham, J.E.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Published by Elsevier B.V. 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9420310/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36037896
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2022.158279
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author Acosta-Ramírez, C.
Higham, J.E.
author_facet Acosta-Ramírez, C.
Higham, J.E.
author_sort Acosta-Ramírez, C.
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description During the two years following the first case of COVID-19 in the United Kingdom, cycles of social restrictions were imposed to control the spread of the virus. These measures curtailed social contact and halted commercial and recreational activities affecting levels of air pollutants. As society adapted, restrictions eased and pollution gradually returned to baseline levels. However, resurgence in COVID-19 cases from new variants created a protracted and challenging path back to ‘normality’. In this study, we retrospectively look back at the two years of COVID-19 and its prevalent variants, and examine the government response and its impact on mobility and air pollution. Results from a peak detection algorithm show peak events in mobility and COVID-19 deaths during variants periods decreased significantly from the wildtype COVID-19, despite the high contagiousness of these variants. Pollution levels remained below baseline with periods of significant increase for O(3), while NO(2) levels remained depleted, likely as a result of reduced traffic congestion as home office schemes have been maintained. Our findings suggest mobility and pollution return to baseline levels as immunity to COVID-19 increases.
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spelling pubmed-94203102022-08-30 Impact of SARS-CoV-2 variants on mobility and air pollution in the United Kingdom Acosta-Ramírez, C. Higham, J.E. Sci Total Environ Article During the two years following the first case of COVID-19 in the United Kingdom, cycles of social restrictions were imposed to control the spread of the virus. These measures curtailed social contact and halted commercial and recreational activities affecting levels of air pollutants. As society adapted, restrictions eased and pollution gradually returned to baseline levels. However, resurgence in COVID-19 cases from new variants created a protracted and challenging path back to ‘normality’. In this study, we retrospectively look back at the two years of COVID-19 and its prevalent variants, and examine the government response and its impact on mobility and air pollution. Results from a peak detection algorithm show peak events in mobility and COVID-19 deaths during variants periods decreased significantly from the wildtype COVID-19, despite the high contagiousness of these variants. Pollution levels remained below baseline with periods of significant increase for O(3), while NO(2) levels remained depleted, likely as a result of reduced traffic congestion as home office schemes have been maintained. Our findings suggest mobility and pollution return to baseline levels as immunity to COVID-19 increases. Published by Elsevier B.V. 2022-12-10 2022-08-28 /pmc/articles/PMC9420310/ /pubmed/36037896 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2022.158279 Text en Crown Copyright © 2022 Published by Elsevier B.V. Since January 2020 Elsevier has created a COVID-19 resource centre with free information in English and Mandarin on the novel coronavirus COVID-19. The COVID-19 resource centre is hosted on Elsevier Connect, the company's public news and information website. Elsevier hereby grants permission to make all its COVID-19-related research that is available on the COVID-19 resource centre - including this research content - immediately available in PubMed Central and other publicly funded repositories, such as the WHO COVID database with rights for unrestricted research re-use and analyses in any form or by any means with acknowledgement of the original source. These permissions are granted for free by Elsevier for as long as the COVID-19 resource centre remains active.
spellingShingle Article
Acosta-Ramírez, C.
Higham, J.E.
Impact of SARS-CoV-2 variants on mobility and air pollution in the United Kingdom
title Impact of SARS-CoV-2 variants on mobility and air pollution in the United Kingdom
title_full Impact of SARS-CoV-2 variants on mobility and air pollution in the United Kingdom
title_fullStr Impact of SARS-CoV-2 variants on mobility and air pollution in the United Kingdom
title_full_unstemmed Impact of SARS-CoV-2 variants on mobility and air pollution in the United Kingdom
title_short Impact of SARS-CoV-2 variants on mobility and air pollution in the United Kingdom
title_sort impact of sars-cov-2 variants on mobility and air pollution in the united kingdom
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9420310/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36037896
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2022.158279
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