Association of environmental and meteorological factors on the spread of COVID-19 in Victoria, Mexico, and air quality during the lockdown

This study aims to analyze the correlation between environmental factors and confirmed cases of COVID-19 pandemic in Victoria, Mexico. The analysis is performed at the micro-level, filtering only confirmed cases of COVID-19 that are located near air quality monitoring stations, within an approximate coverage of 2.5 km, in order to identify a possible specific association between PM2.5, PM10, carbon monoxide (CO), relative humidity, temperature, absolute humidity, and total confirmed cases of COVID-19. The results evidenced that the cases of COVID-19 were very strongly associated with CO concentration. Our results also suggested that particulate matter pollution (PM2.5 and PM10) exposure have a significant correlation for confirmed cases of COVID-19. Furthermore, we studied the changes in air quality during the COVID-19 outbreak by comparing the average concentration of the four weeks before lockdown (February 16 to March 14, 2020) and the following twelve weeks during the partial lockdown (March 15 to June 06, 2020), revealing a very significant decrease of pollutants. •The first study on the effects of environmental and meteorological factors on COVID-19 cases in Mexico.•A decrease of more than 44% was found in the concentration levels of PM2.5, PM10 and CO during the lockdown period.•A strong positive correlation between confirmed COVID-19 cases with carbon monoxide.•PM2.5 and PM10 show a positive association with confirmed cases of COVID-19.•Temperature is negatively correlated to the spread of COVID-19.