Abstract
The unprecedented COVID-19 pandemic is showing dramatic impact across the world. Public health authorities attempt to fight against the virus while maintaining economic activity. In the face of the uncertainty derived from the virus, all the countries have adopted non-pharmaceutical interventions for limiting the mobility and maintaining social distancing. In order to support these interventions, some health authorities and governments have opted for sharing very fine-grained data related with the impact of the virus in their territories. Geographical science is playing a major role in terms of understanding how the virus spreads across regions. Location of cases allows identifying the spatial patterns traced by the virus. Understanding these patterns makes controlling the virus spread feasible, minimizes its impact in vulnerable regions, anticipates potential outbreaks, or elaborates predictive risk maps. The application of geospatial analysis to fine-grained data must be urgently adopted for optimal decision making in real and near-real time. However, some aspects related to process and map sensitive health data in emergency cases have not yet been sufficiently explored. Among them include concerns about how these datasets with sensitive information must be shown depending on aspects related to data aggregation, scaling, privacy issues, or the need to know in advance the particularities of the study area. In this paper, we introduce our experience in mapping fine-grained data related to the incidence of the COVID-19 during the first wave in the region of Galicia (NW Spain), and after that we discuss the mentioned aspects.
Highlights
On 31 December 2019, China reported several cases of pneumonia related to a novel coronavirus in Wuhan, mainland China
Different national strategies were implemented that ranged from a coexistence with the virus to its total suppression (i.e., Zero COVID), being a referent in both extremes the policies initially adopted by Sweden and China
Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and geospatial analysis became essential tools for modelling the virus spread and in subsequent steps related with contact tracing of cases, testing, and/or vaccine distribution according with the territorial particularities of a region
Summary
On 31 December 2019, China reported several cases of pneumonia related to a novel coronavirus in Wuhan, mainland China. Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and geospatial analysis became essential tools for modelling the virus spread and in subsequent steps related with contact tracing of cases, testing, and/or vaccine distribution according with the territorial particularities of a region. In subsequent editorials of The Lancet, a group of experts referred to the weakness of the so-called test-trace-isolate tryptic for explaining the tremendous impact of the virus in this country They made a desperate appeal to authorities to make public fine-grained and detailed data related to the incidence of the virus [20,21], which would help in responding adequately to new outbreaks. The most relevant ideas shown in this paper are summarized in the Conclusions section
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