The impact of Brazil’s transport network on the spread of COVID-19

The transport network between cities is key in understanding epidemic outbreaks, especially in a vast country like Brazil with 5569 cities spread out over 8.5 million square kilometers. In order to study the COVID-19 spread in Brazil, we built a transport network where each city is a node and the edges are connections by land and air. Our findings have shown that by adding air connections, the average path length substantially decreases (70%) while the clustering coefficient remains almost unchanged, very typical of small-world networks. The airways are shortcuts connecting previously distant cities and hubs, therefore shrinking the distances in the network. Also, the cities with airports are central nodes, which makes them dissemination hotspots and key targets for interventions.