Editorial of the VSI "Environmental, ecological and public health considerations regarding coronaviruses, other viruses, and other microorganisms potentially causing pandemic diseases".

Main details of the Special Issue

The Virtual Special Issue (VSI) “Environmental, ecological and public health considerations regarding coronaviruses, other viruses, and other microorganisms potentially causing pandemic diseases”, with short title “Environment-pandemic”, has received more than 150 submissions from authors of different countries around the world. This means that it has attracted high attention and interest. It has been considered especially relevant bearing in mind that the COVID-19 pandemic is currently hitting dramatically to most geographic areas in our planet.

Among accepted papers, most of them focused on relations between COVID-19 (or other epidemic diseases) and air pollution or atmospheric/weather conditions. As selected examples, the works by Bontempi (2020a), Manoj et al. (2020), Chauhan and Singh (2020), Zeng et al. (2020), Doğan et al. (2020), Jayaweera et al. (2020), Mahato and Ghosh (2020), Lovarelli et al. (2020), Beig et al. (2020), Yao et al. (2020), Copat et al. (2020), Bhaganagar and Bhimireddy (2020), Saez et al. (2020), and Azuma et al. (2020).

Other accepted papers focused on overall environmental circumstances or considerations related to COVID-19 and SARS-CoV-2, or other pathogens. Some examples are the works by Nabi et al. (2020a), Lokhandwala and Gautam (2020), Bashir et al. (2020), Coccia (2020), and Razzaq et al. (2020).

Another group of papers dealt with social aspects in relation to epidemic diseases, including COVID-19. Selected examples are the works by Anser et al. (2020), Sarmadi et al. (2020), Yin et al. (2020), Bontempi (2020b), Ekumah et al. (2020), Martinez et al. (2020), and Rodríguez-Barranco et al. (2020).

Other papers focused on aquatic environments/media in relation to some pathogens, as was the case for the publications by Race et al. (2020), Nabi and Khan (2020), De Giglio et al. (2020), and Ahmed et al. (2020).

In the VSI there are also works dealing with drugs and pathogens, as those by Angelopoulou et al. (2020), and Mukherjee et al. (2020).

In addition, it includes the publication by Nikookar et al. (2020), focusing on a specific pathogenic microorganism, and the work by Nabi et al. (2020b) related to urban wildlife.

Finally, other papers treated mixed aspects related with those covered in the VSI, as the works by Bolaño-Ortiz et al. (2020), and Martins et al. (2020).

This Special Issue has not received manuscripts dealing with SARS-CoV in soils or in sewage sludge. In fact, very few papers have treated these aspects up to now, including those by one of the editors (Núñez-Delgado, 2020a, 2020b), but we think that it should be further considered in the future, as currently occurs with wastewater, and specifically with wastewater based epidemiology.

Regarding the countries where the researches were conducted, most of them were from India, China, Italy and Spain, but researchers from many other countries have published in the Special Issue.

Overall, the editors of this VSI think that it constitutes a very interesting contribution to the scientific knowledge on the topic, which is of undoubtable relevance in the current situation of the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as regarding other epidemic pathogens and potential future new pandemics. In addition, the editors think that it could stimulate reflections regarding actions and measures to be taken not only in the short, but also in the medium and long term, regarding biotic and abiotic environmental pollution, biodiversity, climate change, and all global aspects affecting to human and environmental health.

Finally, the editors would like to thank all authors, reviewers and staff from Environmental Research and Elsevier involved in the tasks needed to reach the final result and success of this Special Issue.

Declaration of competing interest

None.