There's no silver lining for smog-filled Mexico City in coronavirus lockdown!

Even as cities like Delhi, Los Angeles, and Seoul have registered a dramatic decrease in levels of air pollution in the face of the coronavirus-induced lockdown, Mexico City continues to report "poor" air quality.

This despite the traffic in the normally congested megacity of more than 20 million people thinning exponentially. Instead, festering garbage dumps, dirty diesel-fuelled generators and frequent forest fires have ensured the Mexican capital remains smog-filled.

Also, increased domestic use of gas and other fossil fuels, methane seeping from open-air waste dumps and continuing emissions from the surrounding industrial sprawl have mostly nullified the clean air benefits of an economy on hold.

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Reuters photographs taken last week from hills that ring the capital show a thick haze blanketing the city, set in a high-altitude basin where smog forms easily and lingers.

Traffic is officially down by about 60 per cent and is likely to fall sharply again once the city implements a one-week driving ban on passenger vehicles from Thursday.

The broader urban area encompassing the capital is home to some 30 million people who have been cooking and heating water more since shelter-in-place restrictions began last month. The area had some 400 open-air dumps and 50,000 industrial generators in hotels, offices and businesses, many of which were still operating despite the quarantine.

Experts now worry that COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, could prove more lethal in Mexico City than elsewhere.

Mexico had 14,677 known infections and 1,351 deaths as of Sunday.