The effect of air quality parameters on new COVID-19 cases between two different climatic and geographical regions in Turkey

Different health management strategies may need to be implemented in different regions to cope with diseases. The current work aims to evaluate the relationship between air quality parameters and the number of new COVID-19 cases in two different geographical locations, namely Western Anatolia and Western Black Sea in Turkey. Principal component analysis (PCA) and regression model were utilized to describe the effect of environmental parameters (air quality and meteorological parameters) on the number of new COVID-19 cases. A big difference in the mean values for all air quality parameters has appeared between the two areas. Two regression models were developed and showed a significant relationship between the number of new cases and the selected environmental parameters. The results showed that wind speed, SO2, CO, NOX, and O3 are not influential variable and does not affect the number of new cases of COVID-19 in the Western Black Sea area, while only wind speed, SO2, CO, NOX, and O3 are influential parameters on the number of new cases in Western Anatolia. Although the environmental parameters behave differently in each region, these results revealed that the relationship between the air quality parameters and the number of new cases is significant.