![]() ![]() Population density facilitates transmission of disease via close person-to-person contact, and may support sustained disease transmission due to increased contact rates. Transmission of airborne and directly transmitted pathogens, such as SARS-CoV-2 (the causative agent of COVID-19), have been previously shown to be density-dependent. The COVID-19 pandemic has infected millions of people globally, and there are over 400 thousand reported deaths and 7 million confirmed cases of COVID-19 worldwide. All authors have seen and approved the manuscript.Ĭompeting interests: The authors have declared no conflicts of interest. The funding bodies had no role in the design and conduct of the study collection, management, analysis, and interpretation of the data preparation, review, or approval of the manuscript and decision to submit the manuscript for publication. ![]() Original data files are available publicly (link: ).įunding: KTLS and BEN were funded for this work by United States Agency for International Development (USAID) through the following cooperative agreement: AID-OAA-A-15-00070. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.ĭata Availability: R code and associated data files are available openly (link: ). Received: DecemAccepted: MaPublished: April 21, 2021Ĭopyright: © 2021 Sy et al. Ndeffo Mbah, Texas A&M University College Station, UNITED STATES ![]() SARS-CoV-2 R 0 estimates need to consider this geographic variability for proper planning and resource allocation, particularly as epidemics newly emerge and old outbreaks resurge.Ĭitation: Sy KTL, White LF, Nichols BE (2021) Population density and basic reproductive number of COVID-19 across United States counties. Our findings suggest that dense areas increase contact rates necessary for disease transmission. The effect of population density on R 0 was not modified by transportation mode. This association remained when adjusted for main mode of transportation and household income. An increase in one unit of log population density increased R 0 by 0.16 (95% CI: 0.13 to 0.19). Counties with greater population density have greater rates of transmission of SARS-CoV-2, likely due to increased contact rates in areas with greater density. A population density threshold of 22 people/km 2 was needed to sustain an outbreak. The median R 0 among the United States counties was 1.66 (IQR: 1.35–2.11). We also assessed whether the association was differential across county-level main mode of transportation percentage as a proxy for transportation accessibility, and adjusted for median household income. We conducted a cross-sectional analysis using linear mixed models with random intercept and fixed slopes to assess the association of population density and R 0, and controlled for state-level effects using random intercepts. We sought to determine the association between population density and R 0 of SARS-CoV-2 across U.S. The basic reproductive number (R 0) is a function of contact rates among individuals, transmission probability, and duration of infectiousness. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |