COVID-19 infection rate but not severity is associated with availability of greenness in the United States.

ABSTRACT: Human exposure to greenness is associated with COVID-19 prevalence and severity, but most relevant research has focused on the relationships between greenness and COVID-19 infection rates. In contrast, relatively little is known about the associations between greenness and COVID-19 hospitalizations and deaths, which are important for risk assessment, resource allocation, and intervention strategies. Moreover, it is unclear whether greenness could help reduce health inequities by offering more benefits to disadvantaged populations. Here, we estimated the associations between availability of greenness (expressed as population-density-weighted normalized difference vegetation index) and COVID-19 outcomes across the urban-rural continuum gradient in the United States using generalized additive

SUBMITTER: Lin J 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9870763 | biostudies-literature | 2023 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature