Environmental impact of COVID-19 pandemic: more negatives than positives

Abstract

Coronaviruses are the well-known cause of severe respiratory, enteric and systemic infections in a wide range of animal hosts including man. The scientific interest on coronaviruses has increased since the outbreak of COVID-19 (SARS-CoV-2) that initiated in Wuhan, China. This was soon declared a 'Public Health Emergency of International Concern' by World Health Organisation (WHO). Presently, the best strategy against this pandemic is prevention through regular hand and face washes, use of masks, gloves and personal protective equipment and social distancing. At the government level, the task is to perform as many tests as possible to identify coronavirus infected people and to isolate them to avoid the uncontrollable spread of the virus. The ongoing and future strategies against coronavirus ensue that huge quantity of masks, plastic products (personal protective equipment (PPE) kits, face shields, etc.) and chemicals (chloroxylenol, chlorine, H₂O₂, etc.) would be generated as waste in near future. Further, the amount of water consumption per person shall also increase. These effects can have unforeseen impacts on the environment. Apart from this, the ecological impacts on human-animal interactions can also be seen, such as people avoiding pets in coming future as a health and safety measure. The present review gives an overview of coronavirus, its current state of spread and environmental and ecological risks ensuing from the pandemic.

Keywords: COVID-19; Environment; Plastic; Pollution; Sanitizer.

Fig. 1

Total number of infected persons throughout the world on 12/10/2020 (WHO 2020)

Fig. 2

A summary of positive and negative effects of COVID-19 on the environment

Fig. 3

Cascade effect of Corona virus on different components of ecosystem