Temporal and spatial characteristics of the spread of COVID-19 in Rio de Janeiro state and city

Ferreira, D.; Ferreira, P.; Oliveira, P.; Ribeiro, J.; Goncalves, E.; Papa, A.

From the first cases detected in Wuhan, China, of infections by the disease of the new coronavirus, COVID-19, until the present moment of this pandemic, millions of people have already been infected and hundreds of thousands have died worldwide. The way in which the virus has been dispersed in Brazil, and more specifically in Rio de Janeiro, is the motivation of the present work. Our studies consist of analyzing temporal and spatial characteristics of the spread of COVID-19 in the municipalities of the state of Rio de Janeiro and in the neighborhoods of the state capital, based on open data published by the Health Departments of Governments of the State of RJ and the Municipality of Rio de Janeiro, covering the period from February 27, 2020 to April 27, 2020. For that, we use analysis of time evolution graphs and mappings of spatial distributions and statistics analysis of spatial correlation. Our results suggest that the initial stages of spreading the virus across the state occur exponentially, with specific regions with a higher concentration of rates of cases, deaths and recovered people. In addition, our qualitative and quantitative results, for the data considered, point out that the regions with the highest income average per capita have higher rates of confirmed cases and recovered people, however, the regions of higher lethality do not are found in these places, with several of these regions of high lethality in places of low income per capita. Our results reinforce the idea of creating specific and strategic plans for policies to combat the spread of COVID-19 in the various localities in Rio de Janeiro.