Abstract
Despite the widespread prevalence of cases associated with the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, little is known about the spatial clustering of COVID-19 in the United States. Data on COVID-19 cases were used to identify U.S. counties that have both high and low COVID-19 incident proportions and clusters. Our results suggest that there are a variety of sociodemographic variables that are associated with the severity of COVID-19 county-level incident proportions. As the pandemic evolved, communities of color were disproportionately impacted. Subsequently, it shifted from communities of color and metropolitan areas to rural areas in the U.S. Our final period showed limited differences in county characteristics, suggesting that COVID-19 infections were more widespread. The findings might address the systemic barriers and health disparities that may result in high incident proportions of COVID-19 clusters.
Highlights
Since late 2019, coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), caused by the novel severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2), has rapidly spread around the globe [1,2,3]
The objectives of this study were to use spatial clustering analyses to determine whether COVID-19 incident proportions vary spatially in the U.S, how spatial clustering may change over time, and sociodemographic characteristics of counties within high COVID-19 incident proportion clusters in the U.S We hypothesize that there would be higher COVID-19 clusters in areas with lower socioeconomic status and adverse community conditions
The results of our analyses suggest that several sociodemographic variables are correlated with higher county-level proportions of COVID-19
Summary
Since late 2019, coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), caused by the novel severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2), has rapidly spread around the globe [1,2,3]. Studies suggested that SARS-CoV-2 originated in a local market in China, where it was transmitted from animals to humans [4]. Emerging research suggests human-to-human transmission of COVID19 through respiratory droplets or direct contact with an infected person [1,3,4,6,7]. Based on data from August of 2021, there were over 202 million global COVID-19 cases, with over four million deaths globally [8]. The highest percentage of cumulative cases associated with the COVID-19 burden was concentrated in the Americas, Europe, and Asia [8]
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