The Lusic Lab in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Genew­erk GmbH pro­vid­ed an insight into spa­tial and tem­po­ral trends of SARS-CoV­‑2 infec­tion out­break linked to ambi­ent air pol­lu­tion, and specif­i­cal­ly par­tic­u­late mat­ter and ozone. Dai­ly pol­lu­tion para­me­ters and pos­i­tive SARS-CoV­‑2 cas­es from Italy, France, Spain and Ger­many were used to build a bina­ry clas­si­fi­er based on arti­fi­cial neur­al net­work. The mod­el shows that par­tic­u­late mat­ter is pos­i­tive­ly cor­re­lat­ed with SARS-CoV­‑2 out­break sever­i­ty, while ozone is pro­tec­tive against the virus at high­er par­tic­u­late con­cen­tra­tions. The find­ings offer a base for gen­er­at­ing a tool to pre­dict the future pace of coro­n­avirus out­breaks by mon­i­tor­ing atmos­pher­ic para­me­ters that are con­tin­u­ous­ly record­ed world­wide. Their impli­ca­tion may be par­tic­u­lar­ly impor­tant for the post COVID-19 era, as strong glob­al eco­nom­i­cal and indus­tri­al re-start is expect­ed.

Link to full arti­cle: https://www.mdpi.com/1999–4915/12/6/588

The Cellular Microbiology Symposium that was planed for 29/04/2020 has now been postponed!
We hope to find a day in October/November instead.