Association of COVID-19 transmission with high levels of ambient pollutants: Initiation and impact of the inflammatory response on cardiopulmonary disease.

Ambient air pollution contributes to 7 million premature deaths annually. Concurrently, the ongoing coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, complicated with S-protein mutations and other variants, caused by the novel severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), has resulted in over 2.5 million deaths globally.