Possible silver lining behind dark cloud of COVID-19
ASILVER lining may loom behind the dark cloud of the dreaded Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) concerning lessons for environmental health and the implications for human health.
Already, articles are emerging from publications such as The Guardian to reveal that researchers today believe that it is humanity’s destruction of biodiversity that creates the conditions for the emergence of deadly viruses and diseases – from Ebola to dengue – many of them becoming significant international public-health threats.
“In fact, a new discipline, planetary health, is emerging that focuses on the increasingly visible connections between the well-being of humans, other living things, and entire ecosystems,” notes a March 18 article from The Guardian, authored by John Vidal.
Another article, published on science-alert. com, notes that COVID-19 “has been decreasing air pollution and possibly even saving lives in the process”.
“Given the huge amount of evidence that breathing dirty air contributes heavily to premature mortality, a natural, if admittedly strange, question is whether the lives saved from this reduction in pollution caused by economic disruption from COVID-19 exceeds the death toll from the virus itself,” says the article, authored by Jacinta Bowler and which quoted resource economist at Stanford University Marshall Burke.
“Even under very conservative assumptions, I think the answer is a clear ‘yes’,” he added in the piece.
Here in Jamaica, stakeholders believe that it may be a tad early to dwell on the issue, given the trauma brought by COVID-19, of which there were close to 180,000 confirmed cases and 7,426 deaths up to March 17. Still, they agree that at some future time, it will have to be looked at.
“We not ready for that yet. We are not ready to equate human lives with environmental gains. There are all kinds of discussions about air quality, and so on, but it is too soon,” said Professor Mona Webber, director of the Centre for Marine Sciences at The University of The West Indies.
“People are dying. We will probably look at all of those things when we have it under control. Right now, the focus has to be on making sure people do not die,” she added.
LOOK AT LINKAGES
Eleanor Jones, chairman and chief executive officer at Environmental Solutions Limited, said there is the need to look at connection, albeit at some future time.
“While the important thing now is to contain the spread and save lives, I think following this, we will need to begin to look at what some of the linkages might be with air quality, particularly in light of the fact that this virus (COVID-19) compromises the respiratory system, and we know that poor air quality compromises the respiratory system, and, by extension, the immune response,” she said. “Going beyond this, we have to try to look at how we improve environmental conditions and, in particular, environmental health conditions. It is something to think about,” Jones added. Jamaica, meanwhile, is adopting a whole-of-government, whole-of-society approach to combat the virus, with some 15 confirmed cases up to yesterday (March 18). Measures include the quarantining of the Seven and Eight Miles communities in Bull Bay, St Andrew; the seven-day scaleback of operations in the country, beginning yesterday (March 18); and the stipulated self-quarantine of up to 14 days of all travellers from countries where there has been local transmission of the virus.
‘People are dying. We will probably look at all of those things when we have it under control. Right now, the focus has to be on making sure people do not die.’