Emerging study on the transmission of the Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) from urban perspective: Evidence from China

This study presents an in-depth investigation on the transmission of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) from the urban perspective. It focuses on the “aftermath” of the outbreak and the spread of the infection among cities. Especially, this study provides insights of the fundamentals of the factors that may affect the spread of the infection in cities, where the marginal effects of some most influential factors to the virus transmission are estimated. It reveals that the distance to epicenter is a very strong influential factor, and is negatively linked with the spread of COVID-19. In addition, subway, wastewater and residential garbage are positively connected with the virus transmission. Moreover, both urban area and population density are negatively associated with the spread of COVID-19 at the early stage of the epidemic. Furthermore, this study also provides high precision estimation of the number of COVID-19 infection in Wuhan city, which is the epicenter of the outbreak in China. Based on the real-world data of cities outside Wuhan on March 2, 2020, the estimated number is 56,944.866 (mean value), which is very close to the officially reported number. The methodology and main conclusions shown in this paper are of general interest, and they can be applied to other countries to help understand the local transmission of COVID-19 as well.