Statistical and network-based analysis of Italian COVID-19 data: communities detection and temporal evolution

Marianna Milano; Mario Cannataro

The copyright holder for this preprint (which was not peer-reviewed) is . https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.04.17.20068916 doi: medRxiv preprint different trend. In the second week, it is possible to notice that Emilia and Marche nodes are disconnected and there is a subgraph composed by Lombardia and Veneto and then there is a large subgraph formed by other regions. In the third week all nodes present connections. In the fourth and and fifth week the Deceased network presents different disconnected components, then, the final network shows a single disconnected node that represents Basilicata. Also the Basilicata represents a single community of Deceased network, see Figure 12 (h). The others extracted communities are: (i) Piemonte, Toscana Liguria, Lazio, Friuli, Puglia, Valle d' Aosta, (ii) Lombardia, Veneto, Emilia, Marche, (iii) Sicilia, Molise, Abruzzo, Umbria, Campania, Trento, Bolzano, Calabria, Sardegna. Figure 10 represents the Total Cases network over the five weeks. The final network evidences that the Italian regions present a significant level of similarity respect to the number of total Coronavirus cases because all nodes are connected. Figure 12 (i) show the communities identified in Total Cases. The first community is composed by Lombardia, Veneto, Emilia, Marche; the second community is composed by Piemonte; the third community is composed by Basilicata, Molise; the fourth community is composed by Toscana Liguria, Lazio, Campania, Friuli, Sicilia Puglia, Valle d' Aosta formed, whereas Abruzzo, Umbria, Trento, Bolzano, Calabria, Sardegna formed the fifth community. Figure 11 shows the evolution of Swab Network that represents the number of performed swab tests. The network, in the first week, shows Lombardia and Veneto nodes disconnected by other regions. In fact they are the Italian regions that initially performed high number of test swabs. Also, Veneto region has not connections in the final network and this reflects the policy of the Veneto to carry out swab tests on asymptomatic subjects, i.e. it is an outlier with respect to other regions. Figure 12 (j) shows the extracted communities in the Swab network. The first community is composed by Veneto; the second community is composed by Lombardia, Emilia; the third community is composed by Basilicata, Molise; the fourth community is formed by Marche, Toscana, Lazio, Piemonte, Friuli, Valle d'Aosta; the fifth community is formed by Sicilia, Campania, Liguria, Puglia; while Abruzzo, Umbria, Trento, Bolzano, Calabria, Sardegna formed the sixth community.