Indian envoy warns of 'big red line,' days after charges laid in Nijjar case
India's envoy to Canada insists relations between the two countries are positive overall, despite what he describes as 'a lot of noise.'
A new study out of the U.S. suggests a correlation between minimal greenspace in lower-income neighbourhoods and higher rates of COVID-19.
The study entitled “Nature inequity and higher COVID-19 case rates in less green neighbourhoods in the United States” was published last week in the journal Nature Sustainability. It analyzed two datasets that compared access to greenspace and COVID-19 case rates for zip codes in 17 states.
The researchers documented the extent of what they called “stacked inequities,” which in this case meant that lower-income and majority racialized communities have both more COVID-19 cases and less nature accessible to them in an urban setting.
The study also investigated whether there is an association between access to nature and COVID-19 rates after accounting for race, ethnicity, income and other variables – an association boosted by the data that contact with nature may play an important role in the body’s ability to fight infections by boosting what are known as “natural killer” or NK cells that attack and kill virally infected cells.
Researchers found that the majority of zip codes that were home to racialized communities had both higher COVID-19 rates and less access to greenspace. The study states that as of Sept. 30, 2020, zip codes with a racialized majority of residents had nearly twice as many COVID-19 cases per 100,000 people as majority-white zip codes.
Less green zip codes also had higher rates of COVID-19 cases, even after researchers adjusted for variables like population density, race and ethnicity, income, time elapsed since the first recorded COVID-19 case, age, and state.
Analysis and modelling in the study found a 4.1 per cent decrease in COVID-19 cases with just a 0.1 per cent increase in access to greenspace.
“Our research shows a stark example of how the COVID-19 pandemic can exacerbate existing inequity,” said lead study author Erica Spotswood in a news release. “The inequality in access to nature in U.S. cities has been shown to have many health effects, and now it looks like it also has had significant health implications during the COVID-19 pandemic.”
The results show that COVID-19 has “inflicted the greatest burden” on communities that also face widespread inequity in nature access, the study states.
“Using ZIP code-scale data, we show that communities with the least access to nature had the highest case rates of COVID-19…we also show that inequity in access to greenness and parks is widespread in the United States,” the study says. “Taken together, our results demonstrate that the pandemic has compounded the disadvantages in low-income areas and communities in colour already facing fewer acres of park available for recreation and less greenness.”
Researchers posit in the study that access to greenspace might affect COVID-19 case rates, as greenspace helps the body fight the virus by boosting the NK cells, which in turn the study says are boosted by contact with nature.
“There’s actually a very clear possible explanation for nature having a protective effect against COVID-19,” said study co-author Ming Kuo explained in the release. “We know spending time in parks or woods boosts our ‘Natural Killer cells’ – our body’s troops for fighting viral infections – and that the greener a person’s residential area, the less likely they are to come down with viral infections of various kinds. Basically, when we’re exposed to a virus – any virus -- our Natural Killer troops try to squash it immediately, before it turns into a full-blown case or causes symptoms.”
“This is true for all viruses we’ve studied, so it would be no surprise for this to be true of the virus underlying COVID, as well,” she continued. “Plus, scientists have discovered a whole host of other ways in which nature helps fight disease – by reducing stress, etc. So, it would actually be more puzzling if we found nature didn’t have a protective effect against COVID-19.”
Another possible explanations for the correlation between nature and COVID-19, the authors state, is that higher air pollution and temperatures have previously been related to higher COVID-19 case rates, something that greenspace and nature helps mitigate and lack of greenspace and access to nature means people might socialize more indoors, where infection in close quarters may be more likely.
Researchers stated that the study demonstrated that inequity in nature access has implications for mental health and social interactions “during a period of profound social and economic upheaval and mental health distress.”
The study authors state that short-term broadening of access to nature may help alleviate some of the distress associated with the pandemic and that recognizing the public health implications of nature inequity could help reframe nature access as critical infrastructure to assist with broader public health initiatives in the long-term.
India's envoy to Canada insists relations between the two countries are positive overall, despite what he describes as 'a lot of noise.'
With Donald Trump sitting just feet away, Stormy Daniels testified Tuesday at the former president's hush money trial about a sexual encounter the porn actor says they had in 2006 that resulted in her being paid to keep silent during the presidential race 10 years later.
The U.S. paused a shipment of bombs to Israel last week over concerns that Israel was approaching a decision on launching a full-scale assault on the southern Gaza city of Rafah against the wishes of the U.S.
Footage from dozens of security cameras in the area of Drake’s Bridle Path mansion could be the key to identifying the suspect responsible for shooting and seriously injuring a security guard outside the rapper’s sprawling home early Tuesday morning, a former Toronto homicide detective says.
A chicken farmer near Mattawa made an 'eggstraordinary' find Friday morning when she discovered one of her hens laid an egg close to three times the size of an average large chicken egg.
Susan Buckner, best known for playing peppy Rydell High School cheerleader Patty Simcox in the 1978 classic movie musical 'Grease,' has died. She was 72.
Accused killer Jeremy Skibicki could have a challenging time convincing a judge that he is not criminally responsible for the deaths of four Indigenous women, a legal analyst says.
A Calgary bylaw requiring businesses to charge a minimum bag fee and only provide single-use items when requested has officially been tossed.
Two Nova Scotia men are dead after a boat they were travelling in sank in the Annapolis River in Granville Centre, N.S., on Monday.
An Ontario man says he paid more than $7,700 for a luxury villa he found on a popular travel website -- but the listing was fake.
Whether passionate about Poirot or hungry for Holmes, Winnipeg mystery obsessives have had a local haunt for over 30 years in which to search out their latest page-turners.
Eighty-two-year-old Susan Neufeldt and 90-year-old Ulrich Richter are no spring chickens, but their love blossomed over the weekend with their wedding at Pine View Manor just outside of Rosthern.
Alberta Ballet's double-bill production of 'Der Wolf' and 'The Rite of Spring' marks not only its final show of the season, but the last production for twin sisters Alexandra and Jennifer Gibson.
A mother goose and her goslings caused a bit of a traffic jam on a busy stretch of the Trans-Canada Highway near Vancouver Saturday.
A British Columbia mayor has been censured by city council – stripping him of his travel and lobbying budgets and removing him from city committees – for allegedly distributing a book that questions the history of Indigenous residential schools in Canada.
Three men in Quebec from the same family have fathered more than 600 children.
A group of SaskPower workers recently received special recognition at the legislature – for their efforts in repairing one of Saskatchewan's largest power plants after it was knocked offline for months following a serious flood last summer.
A police officer on Montreal's South Shore anonymously donated a kidney that wound up drastically changing the life of a schoolteacher living on dialysis.