Coronavirus lockdown in China has saved more lives by controlling pollution than preventing infection

China has been contributing in controlling the spread of the deadly coronavirus by adopting a strict quarantine directive. The measures have not just helped in curbing the growth of the infection, but have also catalysed a sustained drop in air pollution. from factories and vehicles.

The decrease in pollution has saved the lives of tens of thousands of people, a Stanford University researcher said.

Marshall Burke, an assistant professor at Stanford's Department of Earth System Science, told CNN the better air quality could have saved between 50,000 and 75,000 people from dying prematurely. He averaged the drop in pollution levels and calculated the subsequent effect on mortality nationwide.

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NASA and European Space Agency (ESA) pollution monitoring satellites have detected significant decreases in nitrogen dioxide (NO2) over China.

"The reductions in air pollution in China caused by this economic disruption likely saved twenty times more lives in China than have currently been lost due to infection with the virus in that country," Burke wrote on G-Feed.

G-Feed is a site run by a group of scientists researching the relationship between society and the environment.

The unexpected side-effect has been most dramatically seen in southern Chinese cities like Shanghai and Wuhan. In these cities, wintertime pollution comes mainly from cars and small industry.

China continues to be the most impacted by the coronavirus outbreak, with more than 2,000 deaths.