Assessing California Wildfire Smoke Impact on COVID-19 Outcomes Using Remote Sensing Data

Wildfire and wildfire smoke can cause initial morbidity and mortality, mental health problems like depression and trauma, childhood asthma, premature deaths, chronic disease, and cardiovascular disease, and it also could decrease our body’s immune systems. The Air Quality Index (AQI) has been used to measure wildfire smoke. However, the wildfire smoke locations and affected areas are hard to be captured through the AQI. Fire smoke data were downloaded from NOAA Hazard Mapping System Fire and Smoke Product and compared with AQI to measure its relationships with COVID-19 exposures during the first two weeks of the August Complex Fire in California.