Essay 'Covid time and the environment'
Answers
Answer:
The global outbreak of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is affecting every part of human lives, including the physical world. The measures taken to control the spread of the virus and the slowdown of economic activities have significant effects on the environment. Therefore, this study intends to explore the positive and negative environmental impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, by reviewing the available scientific literatures. This study indicates that, the pandemic situation significantly improves air quality in different cities across the world, reduces GHGs emission, lessens water pollution and noise, and reduces the pressure on the tourist destinations, which may assist with the restoration of the ecological system. In addition, there are also some negative consequences of COVID-19, such as increase of medical waste, haphazard use and disposal of disinfectants, mask, and gloves; and burden of untreated wastes continuously endangering the environment. It seems that, economic activities will return soon after the pandemic, and the situation might change. Hence, this study also outlines possible ways to achieve long-term environmental benefits. It is expected that the proper implementation of the proposed strategies might be helpful for the global environmental sustainability.
Keywords: Environmental assessment, Environmental pollution, Environmental management, Environmental sustainability, COVID-19, Public health, Lockdown, GHGs emission, Biomedical waste
1. Introduction
The outbreak of coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19) first emerged at the end of December 2019, from the Hunan seafood market in Wuhan City of China, and declared as an international public health emergency in a couple of weeks by the World Health Organization (WHO, 2020a). It is an infectious disease caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) (Islam et al., 2020; Nghiem et al., 2020; Wang et al., 2020). Genomic analysis revealed that SARS-CoV-2 is phylogenetically associated with SARS viruses, and bats could be the possible primary source (Chakraborty and Maity, 2020). Although the intermediate source of origin and transfer to humans is not clearly known, the rapid human to human transmission capability of this virus has been established (Hui et al., 2020). The transmission of the virus mainly occurred through person-to-person via direct contact or droplets produced by coughing, sneezing and talking (Islam et al., 2020; Li et al., 2020; Wang et al., 2020). As of September 06, 2020; the virus has claimed to spread 216 countries, areas or territories with the death of 876, 616 humans from 26,763,217 confirmed cases (WHO, 2020a), and the number is increasing rapidly. The geographic distribution of COVID-19 cases (Figure 1), and the epidemic curve indicating the number of confirmed cases and deaths in different parts of the world are illustrated