Elsevier

Environmental Research

Volume 188, September 2020, 109814
Environmental Research

Understanding COVID-19 diffusion requires an interdisciplinary, multi-dimensional approach

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envres.2020.109814Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Several environmental studies about COVID-19 transmission mechanism don't account some fundamental parameters.

  • Typical errors considering environment-to-human pollution transmission mechanism are presented.

  • A different vision considering interdisciplinary aspects to account virus diffusion mechanisms is proposed.

  • It is shown that social/economical factors must be accounted determining the COVID-19 initial diffusion.

Abstract

After COVID-19 initial diffusion in Europe in March 2020, research has suggested a direct correlation between environmental pollution and contagion dynamics (i.e., environment-to-human pollution), thereby indicating that mechanisms other than human-to-human transmission can explain COVID-19 diffusion. However, these studies did not consider that complex outcomes, such as a pandemic's diffusion patterns, are typically caused by a multiplicity of environmental, economic and social factors. While disciplinary specialties increase scholars' attitudes of concentrating on specific factors, neglecting this multiplicity during a pandemic crisis can lead to misleading conclusions. This communication aims to focus on certain limitations of current research about environmental-to-human COVID-19 transmission and shows the benefit of an interdisciplinary, multi-dimensional approach to understand the geographical diversity of contagion diffusion patterns.

Keywords

COVID-19
Environment-to-human pollution
Economy
Interdisciplinarity

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