Abstract
The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is caused by a new strain of coronavirus that spreads primarily by close contact. Although Nigeria adopted lockdown measures, no defined strategies were used in setting the distance threshold for these lockdowns. Hence, understanding the drivers of COVID-19 is pivotal to an informed decision for containment measures in the absence of vaccines. Spatial and temporal analyses are crucial drivers to apprehending the pattern of diseases over space and time. Thus, this study aimed to quantify the significance of distance to the temporal dynamics of COVID-19 cases in Nigeria using the Geographic Information System. Incremental spatial autocorrelation was used to analyze datasets of each month in ArcGIS. March, April, May, and June exhibited patterns with no significant peaks, while July and August exhibited patterns with two statistically significant peaks. The first and second peaks of July were 301,338.39 and 365,947.83 meters, respectively, while August was 301,338.39 and 336,128.09 meters, respectively. Therefore, a significant difference in the clustering of COVID-19 over distances between July and August was established. This indicated that progression in the spread of the virus increased the virus's spatial coverage while the distance of risk of exposure decreased. This study's findings could be utilized to establish maximum movement restriction areas to contain the spread of COVID-19.
 Keywords: Distance; Incremental spatial autocorrelation; Covid-19; Disease; Nigeria
 Copyright (c) 2021 Geosfera Indonesia and Department of Geography Education, University of Jember
 This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share A like 4.0 International License
Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
