Abstract

Although studies have previously investigated the spatial factors of COVID-19, most of them were conducted at alow resolution and chose to limit their study areas to high-density urbanized regions.

Hence, this study aims toinvestigate the economic-demographic disparities in COVID-19 infections and their spatial-temporal patterns inareas with different population densities in the United States. In particular, we examined the relationships betweendemographic and economic factors and COVID-19 density using ordinary least squares, geographically weightedregression analyses, and random forest based on zip code-level data of four regions in the United States. Ourresults indicated that the demographic and economic disparities are significant.

Moreover, several areas with disadvantaged groups were found to be at high risk of COVID19 infection, and their infection risk changed at different pandemic periods. The findings of this study can contribute to the planning of public health services, suchas the adoption of smarter and comprehensive policies for allocating economic recovery resources and vaccinesduring a public health crisis.

Yefu Chen Junfeng Jiao Amin Azimian

The authors would like to acknowledge the funding supports from NSF (1952193 and 2133302), UT Good Systems, and USDOT.

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