Welcome to Public Health On Call, a new podcast from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

Our focus is the novel coronavirus. I'm Josh Sharfstein, a faculty member of Johns Hopkins,

and also a former secretary of Maryland's

health department. Our goal with this podcast is to bring evidence and experts to help you understand

today's news about the novel coronavirus and what it means for tomorrow. If you have questions,

you can email them to public health question at jhh.edu. That's public health question at jhh.edu for future podcast episodes.

Today, I speak with Dr. Irvishi Narayan, lead economist at the World Bank for the South

Asia region about her new report entitled

Air Pollution, locked down by COVID-19, but not arrested.

Let's listen.

Dr. Narayan, thank you so much for joining me.

I was struck in reading this great report from the World Bank

that you said some people are now seeing

blue skies for the first time during the coronavirus pandemic because of reduction in air pollution.

Is that a metaphor or is that actually true?

Hi, Josh. And thank you so much for having me. It's really a great delight.

So we are seeing that the economic lockdown and the severe restriction of economic activity that has followed government efforts to contain the pandemic has had a impact on air pollution.

But equally importantly, and it has reduced air pollution, which is why people are seeing

blue skies.

But equally importantly, not every form of pollution has been reduced.

Got it.

So let's talk about the good news and the bad news.

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