Spatio-temporal distribution pattern of COVID-19 in the Northern Italy during the first-wave scenario: The role of the highway network

BACKGROUND: The rapid outbreak of Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has posed several challenges to the scientific community. The goal of this paper is to investigate the spread of COVID-19 in Northern Italy during the so-called first wave scenario and to provide a qualitative comparison with the local highway net. METHODS: Fixed a grid of days from February 27, 2020, the cumulative numbers of infections in each considered province have been compared to sequences of thresholds. As a consequence, a time-evolving classification of the state of danger in terms of Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infections, in view of the smallest threshold overtaken by this comparison, has been obtained for each considered province. The provinces with a significant amount of cases have then been collected into matrices containing only the ones featuring a significant amount of cases. RESULTS: The time evolution of the classification has then been qualitatively compared to the highway network, to identify similarities and thus linking the rapid spreading of COVID-19 and the highway connections. CONCLUSIONS: The obtained results demonstrate how the proposed model properly fits with the spread of COVID-19 along with the Italian highway transport network and could be implemented to analyze qualitatively other disease transmissions in different contexts and time periods.