Question

Write an essay on how coronavirus has the environment (150 Words).
Please answer

Answer 1

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.

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.

Answer 2

Explanation:

A novel infectious disease of coronavirus family was identified in Wuhan, China in late December 2019, which was later named as COVID-19 (Chen et al., 2020). In January 2020, WHO (World Health Organization) confirmed human to human transmission of COVID-19 through respiratory droplets (WHO, 2020). Later on the same month, authorities confirmed a cluster of COVID-19 cases in Wuhan, which increased rapidly not only in surrounding areas but also spread in the whole country and the outbreak turned into epidemic (Dutheil et al., 2020). On January 23rd, Wuhan was placed under quarantine, while Hubei province follows within few days. Subsequently, Chinese government placed the whole country on lockdown to slow down the spread of infection and ease burden on health facilities (Wilder-Smith and Freedman, 2020). Chinese authorities shut down public transport, educational institutes, businesses centers, parks and other social interaction points to curtail the transmission of COVID-19. On January 30th, WHO declared worldwide public health emergency. In February, outbreaks begin in Iran, Italy and other countries around the globe. Subsequently, the epidemic turns into pandemic and by end of March half of the world population was under some form of lockdown (Tosepu et al., 2020). As of April 16, 2020, the total no of COVID-19 cases surpassed 2.1 million worldwide, with no of total deaths more than 135,000 (WHO, 2020).

As countries went into lockdown the industrial activities shut down globally. Among many other sectors, transport is the most hard hit sector due to lockdown. Road and air transport came to halt as people are not allowed or hesitate to travel. According to report, air travel dropped by 96% due to COVID-19, lowest in 75 years (CNN, 2020). Furthermore, not only transport sector but also industrial and manufacturing sector is heavily affected by pandemic. Global oil demand declined drastically and prices cut down sharply, as industrial and transport sectors came to halt worldwide. COVID-19 has severe negative impact on human health and world economy, however it also results in pollution reduction due to limited social and economic activities (Dutheil et al., 2020).

NO2 (nitrogen dioxide) is a highly reactive pollutant and emitted especially from the combustion of fossil fuels. Traffic pollution is considered as the major source of NO2 emissions (He et al., 2020a, He et al., 2020b). NO2 is considered highly lethal to human health as studies shows that both short term and long term exposure to NO2 can increase mortality rate (Faustini et al., 2014). NO2 may cause bronchial hyper responsiveness, cellular inflammation and respiratory problems (He et al., 2020a, He et al., 2020b). Annually 4.6 million people die worldwide due to poor air quality. Air pollution is a global problem and its effects can be seen even across developed nations such as Europe where 193,000 people died due to air pollution in 2012 (Cohen et al., 2017).