Abstract
The COVID-19 outbreak is a manifestation of the contradiction between man and land. Geography plays an important role in epidemic prevention and control with its cross-sectional characteristics and spatial perspective. Based on a systematic review of previous studies, this paper summarizes the research progress on factors influencing the spatial spread of COVID-19 from the research content and method and proposes the main development direction of geography in epidemic prevention and control research in the future. Overall, current studies have explored the factors influencing the epidemic spread on different scales, including global, national, regional and urban. Research methods are mainly composed of quantitative analysis. In addition to the traditional regression analysis and correlation analysis, the spatial lag model, the spatial error model, the geographically weighted regression model and the geographic detector have been widely used. The impact of natural environment and economic and social factors on the epidemic spread is mainly reflected in temperature, humidity, wind speed, air pollutants, population movement, economic development level and medical and health facilities. In the future, new technologies, new methods and new means should be used to reveal the driving mechanism of the epidemic spread in a specific geographical space, which is refined, multi-scale and systematic, with emphasis on exploring the factors influencing the epidemic spread from the perspective of spatial and behavioral interaction, and establish a spatial database platform that combines the information of residents’ cases, the natural environment and economic society. This is of great significance to further play the role of geography in epidemic prevention and control.
Highlights
On 30 December 2019, the Wuhan Municipal Health Commission issued an urgent notice on the treatment of pneumonia of unknown cause, stating that some medical institutions have been receiving patients with pneumonia of unknown cause in recent days, and urging them to take care of the treatment and report it on time
The results showed that the COVID-19 spread was easier in temperate and cold zones than in tropical areas, which was the beginning of the study on the impact of meteorological conditions on the COVID-19 spread
The factors influencing the spatial spread of COVID-19 have attracted more and more attention from the academic community, and the research content and methods have been further developed, providing a reference for further revealing the driving mechanism of the spread of COVID-19
Summary
On 30 December 2019, the Wuhan Municipal Health Commission issued an urgent notice on the treatment of pneumonia of unknown cause, stating that some medical institutions have been receiving patients with pneumonia of unknown cause in recent days, and urging them to take care of the treatment and report it on time On 8 January 2020, the team identified the cause as a novel coronavirus, which has a similar transmission route to the Severe. On 12 January, the World Health Organization designated the novel coronavirus as “2019-nCoV”, predicting an incubation period of. As of 17:30 on 12 July 2021, the cumulative number of confirmed cases worldwide exceeded 186.4 million and the cumulative death toll exceeded 4.03 million (https://www.who.int/, accessed on 12 July 2021).
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