<![CDATA[The spread of the COVID-19 virus in urban areas is accelerating because air quality serves as a vector for the pathogen’s transmission. Epidemiological evaluations generally do not account for the virus’s incubation period and the time lag in the effects of pollutants, leading to errors in timing assessments. This study examines the long-term effects of pollution exposure on the rise in COVID-19 cases in the DKI Jakarta region, using the time-lagged Spearman correlation method. A retrospective time-series ecological study was conducted over 1,077 days of observation, from July 2020 to June 2023, combining Air Pollutant Standard Index (ISPU) data with daily case counts that had been normalized using the Min-Max Scaling method to eliminate biases caused by differences in scale, before being analyzed using time-lagged shifts ranging from H-1 to H-14. The results showed that as the duration of exposure decreased, the correlation increased, reaching its highest value at H-14 with a coefficient of 0.213. This finding supports the virus’s incubation period (5–14 days); it indicates that the decline in respiratory tract resilience caused by air pollution takes two weeks to manifest as a clinical increase in cases. From a management perspective, this model functions as an early warning system. A significant increase in air pollution today signals to authorities to prepare hospital capacity for the next two weeks.]]>
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