Climate indicators and COVID-19 recovery: A case of Wuhan during the lockdown

The world needs to get out of the COVID-19 pandemic smoothly through a thorough socio-economic recovery. The first and the foremost step forward in this direction is the health recovery of the people infected. Our empirical study addresses this neglected point in the recent research on COVID-19 and specifically aims at exploring the impact of the environment on health recovery from COVID-19. The sample data are taken during the lockdown period in Wuhan, i.e., from 23rd January 2020 to 8th April 2020. The recently developed econometric technique of Quantile-on-Quantile regression, proposed by Shin and Zhu (2016) is employed to capture the asymmetric association between environmental factors (TEMP, HUM, PM_2.5, PM₁₀, CO, SO₂, NO₂, and O₃) and the number of recovered patients from COVID-19. We observe significant heterogeneity in the association among variables across various quantiles. The findings suggest that TEMP, PM_2.5, PM₁₀, CO, NO_2, and O₃ are negatively related to the COVID-19 recovery, while HUM and SO₂ show a positive association at most quantiles. The study recommends that maintaining a safe and comfortable environment for the patients may increase the chances of recovery from COVID-19. The success story of Wuhan, the initial epicenter of the novel coronavirus in China, can serve as an important case study for other countries to bring the outbreak under control. The current study could be conducive for the policymakers of those countries where the COVID-19 pandemic is still unrestrained.