Epidemic time series similarity is related to geographic distance and age structure

More similar locations may have similar infectious disease dynamics. There is clear overlap in putative causes for epidemic similarity, such as geographic distance, age structure, and population size. We compare the effects of these potential drivers on epidemic similarity compared to a baseline ass...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Infectious disease modelling 2022-12, Vol.7 (4), p.690-697
Main Authors: Dallas, Tad A., Foster, Grant, Richards, Robert L., Elderd, Bret D.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Age structure
Distance decay
Epidemic similarity
SARS-CoV2
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:More similar locations may have similar infectious disease dynamics. There is clear overlap in putative causes for epidemic similarity, such as geographic distance, age structure, and population size. We compare the effects of these potential drivers on epidemic similarity compared to a baseline assumption that differences in the basic reproductive number (R0) will translate to differences in epidemic trajectories. Using COVID-19 case counts from United States counties, we explore the importance of geographic distance, population size differences, and age structure dissimilarity on resulting epidemic similarity. We find clear effects of geographic space, age structure, population size, and R0 on epidemic similarity, but notably the effect of age structure was stronger than the baseline assumption that differences in R0 would be most related to epidemic similarity. Together, this highlights the role of spatial and demographic processes on SARS-CoV2 epidemics in the United States.
ISSN:2468-0427
2468-2152
2468-0427
DOI:10.1016/j.idm.2022.09.002