Analysis on Air Pollution in South America during the Propagation of COVID-19.

The global pandemic due to the SARS-CoV-2 Coronavirus has caused significant impact on various sectors of society, e.g., health, science, and economy, with a remarkable change in environmental aspects. The present study focused on an analysis of the spread of COVID-19 in South America, highlighting the impacts of lockdown policies on the air quality in the main cities of ten countries during the pandemics, furthermore, through simple regression statistical models, the behavior of accumulated daily cases of COVID-19 in 13 countries was characterized. The lockdown strategy was one of the first measures adopted by the World Health Organization (WHO) to control the spread of the coronavirus, significantly reducing traffic and industrial activities. This measure has surprisingly improved the air quality in four of the 13 South American cities studied, e.g., Guarulhos (Brazil), Santiago de Chile (Chile), Bogota (Colombia), and Lima (Peru), with reductions in PM2.5, PM10, and ozone (O3). The propagation behavior of COVID-19 in South America and the environmental impact analyses provided in this paper demonstrate the intense effect of commercial and industrial activities and can be used to subsidize future reductions in pollution and disease contamination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]