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

Abstract The world needs to get out of the COVID-19 pandemic smoothly through a thorough socio-economic recovery. The first and the foremost step towards this process is the recovery of the people affected medically (COVID-19 patients). This is probably the first empirical study discussing the recovery from COVID-19 disease, and specifically aiming at exploring the environmental impact on COVID-19 recovered patients. The sample data is taken during the lockdown period in Wuhan from 23rd January 2020 to 8th April 2020. The novel econometric technique of Quantile-on-Quantile regression, recently proposed by Shin and Zhu (2016), is employed to capture the asymmetric association between environmental factors (TEMP, HUM, PM2.5, PM10, CO, SO2, NO2, and O3) and number of recovered patients from COVID-19 disease. We observe the heterogeneity among the variables across different quantiles of both independent and dependent variables. The findings suggest that TEMP, PM2.5, PM10, CO, NO2, and O3 are negatively related to the COVID-19 recovery, while HUM and SO2 show a positive association at most of the quantiles. The study recommends that maintaining a safe and comfortable environment for the patients may increase the number of recovered cases 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.