Abstract |
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. |