Abstract
The outbreak of the COVID-19 epidemic has triggered adiscussion of the relationship between urbanization and the spread of infectious diseases. Namely, whether urbanization will exacerbate the spread of infectious diseases. Based on 31 provincial data from 2002 to 2018 in China, the impact of urbanization on the spread of infectious diseases from the dimensions of “population” and “land” is analyzed in this paper by using the GMM (generalized method of moments) model. The empirical study shows that the population increase brought by urbanization does not aggravate the spread of infectious diseases. On the contrary, urban education, employment and entrepreneurship, housing, medical and health care, and other basic public services brought by population urbanization can help reduce the risk of the spread of infectious diseases. The increasing density of buildings caused by land urbanization increases the risk of the spread of infectious diseases. Moreover, the impact of urbanization on the spread of infectious diseases has regional heterogeneity. Therefore, the prevention and control of disease play a crucial role.
Highlights
Public health is related to the national economy and the livelihood of the people and concerns national security and social stability [1], especially during the COVID-19 pandemic
In Hubei Province, most of the confirmed COVID-19 cases appeared in central urban areas, such as the urban areas of Wuhan City as well as the downtown areas of Xiaogan and Huanggang, both of which are near Wuhan
The significance and direction of the regression coefficients of the core explaining variables and control variables in Table 2 for the morbidity and mortality of Category A and B infectious diseases are roughly the same, which further indicates that the empirical results are reliable
Summary
Public health is related to the national economy and the livelihood of the people and concerns national security and social stability [1], especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. The main basis of this hypothesis is that there is a significant gap in the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases between urban and rural areas in various cities. In Hubei Province, most of the confirmed COVID-19 cases appeared in central urban areas, such as the urban areas of Wuhan City as well as the downtown areas of Xiaogan and Huanggang, both of which are near Wuhan. The morbidity rate in rural areas in Hubei Province is relatively low. They found that since the government locked down Wuhan, most of the new cases in Hubei appeared in Wuhan’s urban area
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