Research acitivity about COVID-19 spread and environmental pollution

The extraordinariness of COVID-19 occurred in a world that was completely unprepared to face it. To justify this, sometimes literature proposes positive associations between concentrations of some air pollutants and SARS-CoV-2 infectivity. However, several of these studies are affected by incomplete data analysis and/or incorrect accounts of spread dynamics that can be attributed to respiratory viruses. Several study based on international communication trade data shows that this parameter seems to be a good indicator of virus spread, being proposed as a surrogate of human-to-human interactions. Based on the activity about correlation of COVID-19 spread and environmental pollution

Elza is currently one of the TOP WORLD RESEARCHER (fifth position of reported 500 researchers by SciVal) for the research topic of Coronavirinae; Air Pollution; COVID-19, for the 2020-2024 period (see the image reported on the top).

To better understand the dynamics of virus diffusion, we propose using Kleiber's law (in the form Y = aXb), a theoretical and computational model that links the spread of pathogens to their ability to be transmitted through human-to-human interactions.

Cumulative detected COVID-19 infection cases in all the world countries (on July 05, 2021) versus the trade data (the sum of the total amount of import and export) expressed in US$. Both axes are reported on a logarithmic scale. The data can be interpolated by two different power laws depending on the applied strategies to manage the pandemic (the lines are shown in the figure) but having the same scaling exponent. This suggests a similar spread mechanism for the countries grouped in the two different aggregations (reference)

See my invited TEDx presentation about this topic made on 18 May 2024

The Kleiber's law has the form Y = aXb. The proposed approach uses X to represent human-to-human interaction and Y to represent infection cases. The exponent, b, reflects general dynamic rules across the system, and the constants a and b can be determined through data fitting. This can be justified by considering that human interactions represent the feed of a contagious spread. This general theory offers the ability to explain the rapid and surprising spread of both SARS-CoV-2 and Monkeypox (reference)

For more information, see my papers on SCOPUS