Air quality status during 2020 Malaysia Movement Control Order (MCO) due to 2019 novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) pandemic
Autor
Abdullah, Samsuri
Abu Mansor, Amalina
Mohd Napi, Nur Nazmi Liyana
Wan Mansor a, Wan Nurdiyana
Najah Ahmed, Ali
Ismail, Marzuki
Ahmad Ramly, Zamzam Tuah
Institución
Resumen
An outbreak of respiratory illness which is proven to be infected by a 2019 novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) officially named as Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) was first detected in Wuhan, China and has spread rapidly
in other parts of China as well as other countries around the world, including Malaysia. The first case in Malaysia
was identified on 25 January 2020 and the number of cases continue to rise since March 2020. Therefore, 2020
Malaysia Movement Control Order (MCO) was implemented with the aim to isolate the source of the COVID19 outbreak. As a result, there were fewer number of motor vehicles on the road and the operation of industries
was suspended, ergo reducing emissions of hazardous air pollutants in the atmosphere. We had acquired the Air
Pollutant Index (API) data from the Department of Environment Malaysia on hourly basis before and during the
MCO with the aim to track the changes of fine particulate matter (PM2.5) at 68 air quality monitoring stations. It
was found that the PM2.5 concentrations showed a high reduction of up to 58.4% during the MCO. Several red
zone areas (N41 confirmed COVID-19 cases) had also reduced of up to 28.3% in the PM2.5 concentrations variation.
The reduction did not solely depend on MCO, thus the researchers suggest a further study considering the
influencing factors that need to be adhered to in the future.