SARS-CoV-2 Dissemination using a Network of the United States Counties

TL;DR

This paper models COVID-19 spread across US counties using network science and time series analysis to identify high-risk areas and inform targeted public health interventions.

Contribution

It introduces a novel application of GNAR models to COVID-19 data across US counties, integrating network structure with epidemiological modeling.

Findings

Effective identification of high-risk counties for targeted interventions

Demonstrated the utility of GNAR models in epidemiological data

Provided insights into the spatial-temporal dynamics of COVID-19

Abstract

During 2020 and 2021, severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) transmission has been increasing amongst the world's population at an alarming rate. Reducing the spread of SARS-CoV-2 and other diseases that are spread in similar manners is paramount for public health officials as they seek to effectively manage resources and potential population control measures such as social distancing and quarantines. By analyzing the United States' county network structure, one can model and interdict potential higher infection areas. County officials can provide targeted information, preparedness training, as well as increase testing in these areas. While these approaches may provide adequate countermeasures for localized areas, they are inadequate for the holistic United States. We solve this problem by collecting coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) infections and deaths from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention{\color{black},} and {\color{black} adjacency between all counties obtained} from the United States Census Bureau. Generalized network autoregressive (GNAR) time series models have been proposed as an efficient learning algorithm for networked datasets. This work fuses network science and operations research techniques to univariately model COVID-19 cases, deaths, and current survivors across the United States' county network structure.