Simulation of Spatiotemporal Relationship between COVID-19 Propagation and Regional Economic Development in China

Abstract

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) propagation in 2019 posed serious threats and challenges to human public health and safety. Currently, COVID-19 is still not effectively controlled in certain countries and regions. This study combines the traditional susceptible-exposed-infectious-recovered (SEIR) model, system dynamics (SD) model, and cellular automata (CA) model to construct a spatiotemporal dynamics pandemic model (SDPM). The SDPM is used to dynamically depict the spatiotemporal diffusion and outbreak of COVID-19 through research on the relationship between epidemic spread and regional development. The results show that: (1) There is a positive correlation between regional development and epidemic spread. The more developed the regional economy, especially in areas with short-range population migration from Hubei Province, the more severe the epidemic spread; and (2) The spatial isolation and control measures adopted by the government can effectively prevent the COVID-19 spread. The results explore the relationship between COVID-19 spread and regional economic development by studying the spatial and temporal transmission characteristics of COVID-19, and provide a scientific reference for the government to formulate reasonable response measures.