HealthGuard: Health and Preventive Medicine Research
Using Gis to Understand the Spatial and Spatiotemporal Pattern of Covid-19 Cases and Deaths in Oklahoma
Abstract
Amune Ofuje Blessing
COVID-19, which hit the world in December 2019 has been a great cause of concern, requiring intense research to curb the virus and create focused polices and management. Therefore, the focus of this research is to provide invaluable insights and add to existing knowledge on the COVID-19 virus by using GIS based models to analyze the spatial and spatiotemporal patterns of COVID-19 in Oklahoma. Due to the nature of the virus, it is important to continually assess the geographic distribution of cases and deaths as well as factors that contribute to the patterns. The study therefore uses GIS based methods such as the Getis-Ord Gi statistic, space time cube and time series clustering to identify hotspots of COVID-19 cases and deaths in Oklahoma.
The result showed that hotspots of COVID-19 cases were found around Oklahoma City where hotspots of Blacks and Hispanics are located. Whereas for COVID-19 deaths, significant hotspots pattern was found in rural areas majorly where significant hotspots of American Indians are located. In addition, a significant uptrend of COVID-19 cases was found in few zip codes, and a significant decrease in COVID-19 deaths was found in most zip codes located in the state. Lastly areas experiencing similar increase and decrease trends in both COVID-19 cases and deaths were identified. Future work is needed to identify the binding factors that may be causing the similarities in trend in places that share similar upward and downward trend the virus.