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Assessing the Country-Level Excess All-Cause Mortality and the Impacts of Air Pollution and Human Activity during the COVID-19 Epidemic

Author

Listed:
  • Yuan Meng

    (Department of Land Surveying and Geo-Informatics, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong)

  • Man Sing Wong

    (Department of Land Surveying and Geo-Informatics, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong
    Research Institute for Sustainable Urban Development, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong)

  • Hanfa Xing

    (School of Geography, South China Normal University, Guangzhou 510000, China
    College of Geography and Environment, Shandong Normal University, Jinan 250000, China)

  • Mei-Po Kwan

    (Department of Geography and Resource Management, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong
    Institute of Space and Earth Information Science, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong
    Department of Human Geography and Spatial Planning, Utrecht University, 3584 CB Utrecht, The Netherlands)

  • Rui Zhu

    (Department of Land Surveying and Geo-Informatics, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong)

Abstract

The impact of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) on cause-specific mortality has been investigated on a global scale. However, less is known about the excess all-cause mortality and air pollution-human activity responses. This study estimated the weekly excess all-cause mortality during COVID-19 and evaluated the impacts of air pollution and human activities on mortality variations during the 10th to 52nd weeks of 2020 among sixteen countries. A SARIMA model was adopted to estimate the mortality benchmark based on short-term mortality during 2015–2019 and calculate excess mortality. A quasi-likelihood Poisson-based GAM model was further applied for air pollution/human activity response evaluation, namely ground-level NO 2 and PM 2.5 and the visit frequencies of parks and workplaces. The findings showed that, compared with COVID-19 mortality (i.e., cause-specific mortality), excess all-cause mortality changed from −26.52% to 373.60% during the 10th to 52nd weeks across the sixteen countries examined, revealing higher excess all-cause mortality than COVID-19 mortality in most countries. For the impact of air pollution and human activities, the average country-level relative risk showed that one unit increase in weekly NO 2 , PM 2.5 , park visits and workplace visits was associated with approximately 1.54% increase and 0.19%, 0.23%, and 0.23% decrease in excess all-cause mortality, respectively. Moreover, compared with the impact on COVID-19 mortality, the relative risks of weekly NO 2 and PM 2.5 were lower, and the relative risks of weekly park and workplace visits were higher for excess all-cause mortality. These results suggest that the estimation based on excess all-cause mortality reduced the potential impact of air pollution and enhanced the influence of human activities compared with the estimation based on COVID-19 mortality.

Suggested Citation

  • Yuan Meng & Man Sing Wong & Hanfa Xing & Mei-Po Kwan & Rui Zhu, 2021. "Assessing the Country-Level Excess All-Cause Mortality and the Impacts of Air Pollution and Human Activity during the COVID-19 Epidemic," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 18(13), pages 1-16, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:18:y:2021:i:13:p:6883-:d:583033
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Erik Brynjolfsson & John J. Horton & Adam Ozimek & Daniel Rock & Garima Sharma & Hong-Yi TuYe, 2020. "COVID-19 and Remote Work: An Early Look at US Data," NBER Working Papers 27344, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Venter, Zander & Barton, David & gundersen, vegard & Figari, Helene & Nowell, Megan, 2020. "Urban nature in a time of crisis: recreational use of green space increases during the COVID-19 outbreak in Oslo, Norway," SocArXiv kbdum, Center for Open Science.
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