← Other projects

COVAIR-CAT: Air Pollution in Relation to COVID-19 Morbidity and Mortality: A Large Population-Based Cohort Study in Catalonia

Research Leader:

Cathryn Tonne

Institution:

ISGlobal

Exposure to air pollution may contribute to the wide disparities between and within countries in the health burden from COVID-19. Air pollution is an important risk factor for several non-communicable diseases that increase vulnerability to COVID-19. Understanding whether the role of air pollution in COVID-19 is different from its role in the wider suite of respiratory infections is essential for identifying public health priorities.

HYPOTHESIS

Long or short-term exposure to air pollution increases the risk of COVID-19 hospital admissions or mortality and to identify vulnerable subgroups in the general population of Catalonia, Spain.

OBJECTIVES

The objective of COVAIR-CAT is to test whether long or short-term exposure to air pollution increases the risk of COVID-19 hospital admissions or mortality and to identify vulnerable subgroups in the general population of Catalonia.

The project aims to test whether:

1) long-term exposure to air pollution is associated with COVID-19 hospital admission or mortality;

2) short-term exposure to air pollution is associated with COVID-19 hospital admission or mortality following COVID-19 diagnosis;

3) the influence of long- or short-term exposure to air pollution on COVID-19 outcomes differs according to individual-level socio-demographic factors, comorbidities, area-level socioeconomic factors, or other environmental exposures; and

4) the influence of long-term air pollution exposure on COVID-19 hospital admissions and mortality differs from that for respiratory infections not due to SARS-COV-2 infection.

The aim of setting this agreement is because we will be using administrative data from PADRIS to investigate the relationship between air pollution and COVID hospital admission and mortality. Given that we have only limited socioeconomic and lifestyle information on the individuals in the administrative data and would like to explore how much confounding we might have from confounders measured with error or not at all. For this purpose, we want to explore the association between air pollution exposure and individual-level socioeconomic variables (from GCAT) adjusted for pharmacy co-payment status (from PADRIS) and area-level urban vulnerability and the association between air pollution exposure and lifestyle factors (e.g. smoking status, physical activity from GCAT) adjusted for pharmacy co-payment status (from PADRIS) and area-level urban vulnerability.