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. 2020 Aug 10:729:139022.
doi: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2020.139022. Epub 2020 Apr 27.

Air quality status during 2020 Malaysia Movement Control Order (MCO) due to 2019 novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) pandemic

Samsuri Abdullah  1 , Amalina Abu Mansor  2 , Nur Nazmi Liyana Mohd Napi  3 , Wan Nurdiyana Wan Mansor  3 , Ali Najah Ahmed  4 , Marzuki Ismail  5 , Zamzam Tuah Ahmad Ramly  6
Affiliations

Air quality status during 2020 Malaysia Movement Control Order (MCO) due to 2019 novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) pandemic

Samsuri Abdullah et al. Sci Total Environ. .

Abstract

An outbreak of respiratory illness which is proven to be infected by a 2019 novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) officially named as Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) was first detected in Wuhan, China and has spread rapidly in other parts of China as well as other countries around the world, including Malaysia. The first case in Malaysia was identified on 25 January 2020 and the number of cases continue to rise since March 2020. Therefore, 2020 Malaysia Movement Control Order (MCO) was implemented with the aim to isolate the source of the COVID-19 outbreak. As a result, there were fewer number of motor vehicles on the road and the operation of industries was suspended, ergo reducing emissions of hazardous air pollutants in the atmosphere. We had acquired the Air Pollutant Index (API) data from the Department of Environment Malaysia on hourly basis before and during the MCO with the aim to track the changes of fine particulate matter (PM2.5) at 68 air quality monitoring stations. It was found that the PM2.5 concentrations showed a high reduction of up to 58.4% during the MCO. Several red zone areas (>41 confirmed COVID-19 cases) had also reduced of up to 28.3% in the PM2.5 concentrations variation. The reduction did not solely depend on MCO, thus the researchers suggest a further study considering the influencing factors that need to be adhered to in the future.

Keywords: Air pollutant index; Coronavirus disease; Fine particulate matter; Malaysia; Movement control order.

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Conflict of interest statement

Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Figures

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Graphical abstract
Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Reduction average based on different regions.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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