Socio-economic disparities and COVID-19 in the USA

COVID-19 is not a universal killer. We study the spread of COVID-19 at the county level for the United States up until the 15th of August, 2020. We show that the prevalence of the disease and the death rate are correlated with the local socio-economic conditions often going beyond local population density distributions, especially in rural areas. We correlate the COVID-19 prevalence and death rate with data from the US Census Bureau and point out how the spreading patterns of the disease show asymmetries in urban and rural areas separately and are preferentially affecting the counties where a large fraction of the population is non-white. Our findings can be used for more targeted policy building and deployment of resources for future occurrence of a pandemic due to SARS-CoV-2. Our methodology, based on interpretable machine learning and game theory, can be extended to study the spread of other diseases.

Automated summary

The study shows that the spread of COVID-19 in urban and rural areas in the United States has different patterns, correlated with local socio-economic conditions and population composition. The findings can be valuable for future policy-making and resource deployment in response to pandemics caused by SARS-CoV-2.