Developing a Place–Time-Specific Transmissibility Index to Measure and Examine the Spatiotemporally Varying Transmissibility of Covid-19

Datos Bibliográficos

ID7634923
AutoresHao Yang (0000-0003-2138-7307, University of Georgia), Xiaobai A Yao (0000-0003-2719-2017, University of Georgia), Ruowei Liu (0000-0001-9495-366X, University of Georgia), Christopher C Whalen (0000-0002-8081-0665, University of Georgia)
Año2023
Volumen113
Número6
Páginas1419-1443
Fecha de publicación2023-07-03
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaAnnals of the American Association of Geographers (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 2469-4452 • E-ISSN: 2469-4460
EditorialInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/24694452.2023.2182758
OpenAlexW4365458228
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas5
Referencias citadas71

The transmission rate of COVID-19 varies by location and time. A proper measure of the transmissibility of an infectious disease should be place- and time-specific, which is currently unavailable. This research aims to better understand the spatiotemporally changing transmissibility of COVID-19. It contributes to COVID-19 research in three ways. First, it presents a generally applicable modeling framework to estimate the transmissibility of COVID-19 in a specific place and time based on daily reported case data, called space-time effective reproduction number, denoted as Rst. Then, the developed model is used to create a spatiotemporal data set of Rst values at the county level in the United States. Second, it investigates relationships between Rst and dynamically changing context factors with multiple machine learning and spatial modeling techniques. The research examines the relationships from a cross-sectional perspective and a longitudinal perspective separately. The longitudinal view allows us to understand how local human dynamics and policy factors influence changes in Rst over time in the place, whereas the cross-sectional view sheds light on the demographic, socioeconomic, and environmental factors behind spatial variations of Rst at a specific time slice. Some general trends of the relationships are found, but the level of impact by each context factor varies geographically. Third, the best performing local longitudinal models have promising potential to simulate or forecast future transmissibility. The random forest and the exponential regression models based on time-series data gave the best performances. These models were further evaluated against ground truth data of county-level reported cases. Their good prediction accuracies in the case study prove that these machine learning models are promising in their ability to predict transmissibility in hypothetical or foreseeable scenarios

Econometrics · Geography · Operations research · Statistics · Computer Science · COVID-19 epidemiological studies · COVID-19 Pandemic Impacts · Data-Driven Disease Surveillance · Mathematics