Impacts of social and economic factors on the transmission of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in China

Yun Qiu; Xi Chen; Wei Shi

Our analysis sample includes 303 prefecture-level cities in China. We exclude Wuhan from our analysis because the epidemic patterns in Wuhan are significantly different from those in other cities. Some confirmed cases in Wuhan contracted the virus through exposure to Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market, which is the most probable origin of the virus 4 . In other cities, infections arise from human to human transmissions. The health care system in Wuhan faced the challenge of previously unknown virus infections in early January and became overwhelmed as the number of new cases increased exponentially from mid-January. These factors may cause severe delay and measurement error issues in the number of cases reported in Wuhan. We alleviate the measurement error problem using variations in the infections caused by exogenous changes in weather conditions which is discussed in detail in Section 3.2.