The nexus of travel restriction, air pollution and COVID-19 infection: Investigation from a megacity of the southern China

  1. Wei Li
  2. Xiaohong Chen

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Abstract

To control and prevent the spread of COVID-19, generalized social distancing measures, such as traffic control and travel restriction acted in China. Previous studies indicated that the traffic conditions had significant influence on the air quality, and which was related to the respiratory diseases. This study aimed to reveal the nexus of travel restriction, air pollution and COVID-19. Shenzhen, one of the top 4 megacities in China was considered as the study area, statistical analysis methods, including linear/nonlinear regression and bivariate correlation was conducted to evaluate the relationship of the traffic and passenger population, travel intensity, NO 2 , PM 10 , PM 2.5 and the number of COVID-19 confirmed cases. The results suggested that traffic control and travel restriction had a significant correlation with the number of COVID-19 confirmed cases, which shown negative correlation with the traffic intensity of the city, NO 2 , PM 10 and PM 2.5 show significant positive correlation with the traffic intensity, traffic control and travel restriction would slow down and prevent the spread of the viruses at the outbreak period. Different study scale might results in different results, thus the research focused on the nexus of traffic control and travel restriction, air pollution and COVID-19 should been enhanced in future, and differentiated epidemic control and prevention measures should be considered according to the different situation of cities as well as countries.

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  1. ScreenIT

    SciScore for 10.1101/2020.04.25.20079335: (What is this?)

    Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.

    Table 1: Rigor

    Institutional Review Board Statementnot detected.
    Randomizationnot detected.
    Blindingnot detected.
    Power Analysisnot detected.
    Sex as a biological variablenot detected.

    Table 2: Resources

    No key resources detected.

    Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).

    Results from LimitationRecognizer: We detected the following sentences addressing limitations in the study:
    Our study had several limitations. First, the travel intensity data was processed daily data which could not reveal the variability of traffic and travel population more accurately, hourly or minutely traffic volume data of the main artery of the city were more useful for further analysis. Second, this study was conducted with statistical method, the meteorological conditions were not considered. Third, this study was conducted at city scale owing to the lack of sufficient data of other cities and countries. Further studies should overcome these limitations and challenges, and the authors hope this study could bring the researcher’s attention on the nexus of the generalized social distancing, air pollution and COVID-19 infection, and conquer this novel disease.

    Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.

    Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.

    Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.

    Results from rtransparent:
    • Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • No protocol registration statement was detected.

    About SciScore

    SciScore is an automated tool that is designed to assist expert reviewers by finding and presenting formulaic information scattered throughout a paper in a standard, easy to digest format. SciScore checks for the presence and correctness of RRIDs (research resource identifiers), and for rigor criteria such as sex and investigator blinding. For details on the theoretical underpinning of rigor criteria and the tools shown here, including references cited, please follow this link.

  2. Version published to 10.1101/2020.04.25.20079335v2 on medRxiv
  3. Version published to 10.1101/2020.04.25.20079335v1 on medRxiv