impact of suspending traffic management plan in tehran on air quality and covid-19 mortality and morbidity

Introduction: the novel coronavirus disease 2019, namely covid-19, has been known as a global pandemic by the world health organization (who). to prevent of covid-19 spread, most countries including iran have implemented many preventive measures. this study aimed to evaluate the effect of implementation (phase-01)/non- implementation (phase-02) of the traffic plan on confirmed cases, suspected cases, and mortality cases by covid-19 as well as on air quality in tehran. materials and methods: daily data of confirmed covid-19 cases, suspected covid-19 cases, mortality covid-19 cases, air pollutants concentration and meteorological variables were obtained from 26 february, 2020 to 5august, 2020 in tehran megacity and data were compared during the period’s implementation /non-implementation of traffic plan in tehran. results: our results showed that the non-implementation of traffic plan has been effective in reducing the number of daily confirmed cases, suspected cases and mortality by covid-19. also, the average concentration of pm10, pm2.5, no2, o3, so2 and co have reduced significantly during non-implementation traffic plan phase. conclusion: our findings indicate that there is a significant association between non-implementation traffic plan and reduce risk of covid-19 infection.