Early Stage Prediction of US County Vulnerability to the COVID-19 Pandemic

Mihir Mehta; Juxihong Julaiti; Paul Griffin; Soundar Kumara

There has been significant epidemiological work for previous coronavirus pandemics such as MERS and SARS. 1 For example, Badawi et al. 2 performed systematic analysis of prevalence of comorbidities in MERS using data from 12 studies and found that diabetes and hypertension were present in 50% of the cases. Matsuyama et al. 3 systematically reviewed studies involving laboratory confirmed MERS cases to measure both the risk of admission to the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) and death. They compared risks by age, gender and underlying comorbidities. Park et al. 4 reviewed characteristics and associated risks factors of MERS. Bauch et al. 5 surveyed SARS modeling literature focused on understanding the basic epidemiology of the disease and evaluating control strategies. Surveyed SARS models varied in the terms of population studied and geographical characteristics. 6, 7 Different designs were used for SARS modeling consisting of deterministic compartmental models 7 , stochastic compartmental models 6 , a combination of stochastic and deterministic compartmental models 8 , discrete-time models 9 , logistics curve fitting models 10 , contact network models 11 and likelihood-based models. 12 Studies associated with risk factors for SARS 13 and MERS 3,14-20 have found an association between comorbidities and infected cases.