Factors affecting the COVID-19 risk in the US counties: an innovative approach by combining unsupervised and supervised learning

TL;DR

This study identifies key environmental, socioeconomic, and demographic factors influencing COVID-19 risk at the US county level using a novel combination of clustering and classification techniques.

Contribution

It introduces an innovative approach combining unsupervised and supervised learning to determine critical COVID-19 risk factors at the county level.

Findings

Mean temperature and population density are significant risk factors.

Socioeconomic factors like poverty and insurance coverage impact COVID-19 risk.

Environmental variables such as air pressure and wind speed are also influential.

Abstract

The COVID-19 disease spreads swiftly, and nearly three months after the first positive case was confirmed in China, Coronavirus started to spread all over the United States. Some states and counties reported high number of positive cases and deaths, while some reported lower COVID-19 related cases and mortality. In this paper, the factors that could affect the risk of COVID-19 infection and mortality were analyzed in county level. An innovative method by using K-means clustering and several classification models is utilized to determine the most critical factors. Results showed that mean temperature, percent of people below poverty, percent of adults with obesity, air pressure, population density, wind speed, longitude, and percent of uninsured people were the most significant attributes