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Analyzing Cross-country Pandemic Connectedness During COVID-19 Using a Spatial-Temporal Database: Network Analysis

Communicable diseases including COVID-19 pose a major threat to public health worldwide. To curb the spread of communicable diseases effectively, timely surveillance and prediction of the risk of pandemics are essential. The aim of this study is to analyze free and publicly available data to constru...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Chu, Amanda MY, Chan, Jacky NL, Tsang, Jenny TY, Tiwari, Agnes, So, Mike KP
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: JMIR Publications 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8088858/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33711799
http://dx.doi.org/10.2196/27317
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author Chu, Amanda MY
Chan, Jacky NL
Tsang, Jenny TY
Tiwari, Agnes
So, Mike KP
author_facet Chu, Amanda MY
Chan, Jacky NL
Tsang, Jenny TY
Tiwari, Agnes
So, Mike KP
author_sort Chu, Amanda MY
collection PubMed
description Communicable diseases including COVID-19 pose a major threat to public health worldwide. To curb the spread of communicable diseases effectively, timely surveillance and prediction of the risk of pandemics are essential. The aim of this study is to analyze free and publicly available data to construct useful travel data records for network statistics other than common descriptive statistics. This study describes analytical findings of time-series plots and spatial-temporal maps to illustrate or visualize pandemic connectedness. We analyzed data retrieved from the web-based Collaborative Arrangement for the Prevention and Management of Public Health Events in Civil Aviation dashboard, which contains up-to-date and comprehensive meta-information on civil flights from 193 national governments in accordance with the airport, country, city, latitude, and the longitude of flight origin and the destination. We used the database to visualize pandemic connectedness through the workflow of travel data collection, network construction, data aggregation, travel statistics calculation, and visualization with time-series plots and spatial-temporal maps. We observed similar patterns in the time-series plots of worldwide daily flights from January to early-March of 2019 and 2020. A sharp reduction in the number of daily flights recorded in mid-March 2020 was likely related to large-scale air travel restrictions owing to the COVID-19 pandemic. The levels of connectedness between places are strong indicators of the risk of a pandemic. Since the initial reports of COVID-19 cases worldwide, a high network density and reciprocity in early-March 2020 served as early signals of the COVID-19 pandemic and were associated with the rapid increase in COVID-19 cases in mid-March 2020. The spatial-temporal map of connectedness in Europe on March 13, 2020, shows the highest level of connectedness among European countries, which reflected severe outbreaks of COVID-19 in late March and early April of 2020. As a quality control measure, we used the aggregated numbers of international flights from April to October 2020 to compare the number of international flights officially reported by the International Civil Aviation Organization with the data collected from the Collaborative Arrangement for the Prevention and Management of Public Health Events in Civil Aviation dashboard, and we observed high consistency between the 2 data sets. The flexible design of the database provides users access to network connectedness at different periods, places, and spatial levels through various network statistics calculation methods in accordance with their needs. The analysis can facilitate early recognition of the risk of a current communicable disease pandemic and newly emerging communicable diseases in the future.
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spelling pubmed-80888582021-05-07 Analyzing Cross-country Pandemic Connectedness During COVID-19 Using a Spatial-Temporal Database: Network Analysis Chu, Amanda MY Chan, Jacky NL Tsang, Jenny TY Tiwari, Agnes So, Mike KP JMIR Public Health Surveill Rapid Surveillance Report Communicable diseases including COVID-19 pose a major threat to public health worldwide. To curb the spread of communicable diseases effectively, timely surveillance and prediction of the risk of pandemics are essential. The aim of this study is to analyze free and publicly available data to construct useful travel data records for network statistics other than common descriptive statistics. This study describes analytical findings of time-series plots and spatial-temporal maps to illustrate or visualize pandemic connectedness. We analyzed data retrieved from the web-based Collaborative Arrangement for the Prevention and Management of Public Health Events in Civil Aviation dashboard, which contains up-to-date and comprehensive meta-information on civil flights from 193 national governments in accordance with the airport, country, city, latitude, and the longitude of flight origin and the destination. We used the database to visualize pandemic connectedness through the workflow of travel data collection, network construction, data aggregation, travel statistics calculation, and visualization with time-series plots and spatial-temporal maps. We observed similar patterns in the time-series plots of worldwide daily flights from January to early-March of 2019 and 2020. A sharp reduction in the number of daily flights recorded in mid-March 2020 was likely related to large-scale air travel restrictions owing to the COVID-19 pandemic. The levels of connectedness between places are strong indicators of the risk of a pandemic. Since the initial reports of COVID-19 cases worldwide, a high network density and reciprocity in early-March 2020 served as early signals of the COVID-19 pandemic and were associated with the rapid increase in COVID-19 cases in mid-March 2020. The spatial-temporal map of connectedness in Europe on March 13, 2020, shows the highest level of connectedness among European countries, which reflected severe outbreaks of COVID-19 in late March and early April of 2020. As a quality control measure, we used the aggregated numbers of international flights from April to October 2020 to compare the number of international flights officially reported by the International Civil Aviation Organization with the data collected from the Collaborative Arrangement for the Prevention and Management of Public Health Events in Civil Aviation dashboard, and we observed high consistency between the 2 data sets. The flexible design of the database provides users access to network connectedness at different periods, places, and spatial levels through various network statistics calculation methods in accordance with their needs. The analysis can facilitate early recognition of the risk of a current communicable disease pandemic and newly emerging communicable diseases in the future. JMIR Publications 2021-03-29 /pmc/articles/PMC8088858/ /pubmed/33711799 http://dx.doi.org/10.2196/27317 Text en ©Amanda MY Chu, Jacky NL Chan, Jenny TY Tsang, Agnes Tiwari, Mike KP So. Originally published in JMIR Public Health and Surveillance (http://publichealth.jmir.org), 29.03.2021. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work, first published in JMIR Public Health and Surveillance, is properly cited. The complete bibliographic information, a link to the original publication on http://publichealth.jmir.org, as well as this copyright and license information must be included.
spellingShingle Rapid Surveillance Report
Chu, Amanda MY
Chan, Jacky NL
Tsang, Jenny TY
Tiwari, Agnes
So, Mike KP
Analyzing Cross-country Pandemic Connectedness During COVID-19 Using a Spatial-Temporal Database: Network Analysis
title Analyzing Cross-country Pandemic Connectedness During COVID-19 Using a Spatial-Temporal Database: Network Analysis
title_full Analyzing Cross-country Pandemic Connectedness During COVID-19 Using a Spatial-Temporal Database: Network Analysis
title_fullStr Analyzing Cross-country Pandemic Connectedness During COVID-19 Using a Spatial-Temporal Database: Network Analysis
title_full_unstemmed Analyzing Cross-country Pandemic Connectedness During COVID-19 Using a Spatial-Temporal Database: Network Analysis
title_short Analyzing Cross-country Pandemic Connectedness During COVID-19 Using a Spatial-Temporal Database: Network Analysis
title_sort analyzing cross-country pandemic connectedness during covid-19 using a spatial-temporal database: network analysis
topic Rapid Surveillance Report
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8088858/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33711799
http://dx.doi.org/10.2196/27317
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