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Author(s):
Xiaodan Zhou, Kevin Josey, Leila Kamareddine, Miah C. Caine, Tianjia Liu, Loretta J. Mickley, Matthew Cooper, Francesca Dominici
Year Published:

Cataloging Information

Topic(s):
Smoke & Air Quality
Smoke & Populations

NRFSN number: 23462
FRAMES RCS number: 64185
Record updated:

The year 2020 brought unimaginable challenges in public health, with the confluence of the COVID-19 pandemic and wildfires across the western United States. Wildfires produce high levels of fine particulate matter (PM2.5). Recent studies reported that short-term exposure to PM2.5 is associated with increased risk of COVID-19 cases and deaths. We acquired and linked publicly available daily data on PM2.5, the number of COVID-19 cases and deaths, and other confounders for 92 western U.S. counties that were affected by the 2020 wildfires. We estimated the association between short-term exposure to PM2.5 during the wildfires and the epidemiological dynamics of COVID-19 cases and deaths. We adjusted for several time-varying confounding factors (e.g., weather, seasonality, long-term trends, mobility, and population size). We found strong evidence that wildfires amplified the effect of short-term exposure to PM2.5 on COVID-19 cases and deaths, although with substantial heterogeneity across counties.

Citation

Zhou, Xiaodan; Josey, Kevin; Kamareddine, Leila; Caine, Miah C.; Liu, Tianjia; Mickley, Loretta J.; Cooper, Matthew; Dominici, Francesca. 2021. Excess of COVID-19 cases and deaths due to fine particulate matter exposure during the 2020 wildfires in the United States. Science Advances 7(33):eabi8789. DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abi8789

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