Phogole Bopaki, Yessoufou Kowiyou
Department of Geography, Environmental Management, and Energy Studies University of Johannesburg Johannesburg South Africa.
Geohealth. 2024 Oct 10;8(10):e2024GH001110. doi: 10.1029/2024GH001110. eCollection 2024 Oct.
The COVID-19 outbreak in 2020 resulted in rapidly rising infection rates with high associated mortality rates. In response, several epidemiological studies aimed to define ways in which the spread and severity of COVID-19 can be curbed. As a result, there is a steady increase in the evidence linking greenspaces and COVID-19 impact. However, the evidence of the benefits of greenspaces or greenness to human wellbeing in the context of COVID-19 is fragmented and sometimes contradictory. This calls for a meta-analysis of existing studies to clarify the matter. Here, we identified 621 studies across the world on the matter, which were then filtered down to 13 relevant studies for meta-analysis, covering Africa, Asia, Europe, and the USA. These studies were meta-analyzed, with the impacts of greenness on COVID-19 infection rate quantified using regression estimates whereas impacts on mortality rates were measured using mortality rate ratios. We found evidence of significant negative correlations between greenness and both COVID-19 infection and mortality rates. We further found that the impacts on COVID-19 infection and related mortality are moderated by year of publication, greenness metrics, sample size, health and political covariates. This clarification has far-reaching implications for policy development toward the establishment and management of green infrastructure for the benefit of human wellbeing.
2020年新冠疫情爆发导致感染率迅速上升，死亡率也居高不下。作为应对措施，多项流行病学研究旨在确定控制新冠疫情传播和严重程度的方法。因此，将绿地与新冠疫情影响联系起来的证据在不断增加。然而，在新冠疫情背景下，绿地或绿化对人类福祉有益的证据零散，有时甚至相互矛盾。这就需要对现有研究进行荟萃分析以厘清此事。在此，我们在全球范围内确定了621项关于该问题的研究，然后筛选出13项相关研究进行荟萃分析，涵盖非洲、亚洲、欧洲和美国。对这些研究进行了荟萃分析，使用回归估计量化绿化对新冠感染率的影响，而对死亡率的影响则使用死亡率比值来衡量。我们发现绿化与新冠感染率和死亡率之间均存在显著负相关的证据。我们还进一步发现，对新冠感染及相关死亡率的影响受到发表年份、绿化指标、样本量、健康和政治协变量的调节。这一厘清结果对制定旨在建立和管理绿色基础设施以促进人类福祉的政策具有深远意义。
