• Dayun Kang, Hyunho Choi, Jong-Hun Kim, and Jungsoon Choi.
• Department of Applied Statistics, Hanyang University, Seoul, Republic of Korea.
• Int. J. Infect. Dis. 2020 May 1; 94: 96-102.

BackgroundOn 31 December 2019 an outbreak of COVID-19 in Wuhan, China, was reported. The outbreak spread rapidly to other Chinese cities and multiple countries. This study described the spatio-temporal pattern and measured the spatial association of the early stages of the COVID-19 epidemic in mainland China from 16 January-06 February 2020.MethodsThis study explored the spatial epidemic dynamics of COVID-19 in mainland China. Moran's I spatial statistic with various definitions of neighbours was used to conduct a test to determine whether a spatial association of the COVID-19 infections existed.ResultsThe spatial spread of the COVID-19 pandemic in China was observed. The results showed that most of the models, except medical-care-based connection models, indicated a significant spatial association of COVID-19 infections from around 22 January 2020.ConclusionsSpatial analysis is of great help in understanding the spread of infectious diseases, and spatial association was the key to the spatial spread during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic in mainland China.Copyright © 2020 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd.. All rights reserved.

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