School of Mathematical Sciences, Queen Mary University of London, London E1 4NS, UK.
J R Soc Interface. 2021 Jan;18(174):20200961. doi: 10.1098/rsif.2020.0961. Epub 2021 Jan 27.
One of the most concerning aspects of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic is that it disproportionately affects people from some specific ethnic and socio-economic minorities. In particular, since from the beginning of the pandemic it has been clear that people from Black and African American backgrounds seem to be hit especially hard by the virus, creating a substantial infection gap. The observed abnormal impact on these ethnic groups could probably be due to the co-occurrence of other known risk factors, including co-morbidity, poverty, level of education, access to healthcare, residential segregation and response to cures, although those factors do not seem able to explain fully and in depth the excess incidence of infections and deaths among African Americans. Here, we introduce the concept of diffusion segregation, that is the extent to which a given group of people is internally clustered or exposed to other groups, as a result of mobility and commuting habits. By analysing census and mobility data on major US cities, we found that the weekly excess COVID-19 incidence and mortality in African American communities at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic is significantly associated with their level of diffusion segregation. The results confirm that knowing where people commute to, rather than where they live, is potentially much more important to contain and curb the spreading of infectious diseases.
持续的 COVID-19 大流行最令人担忧的方面之一是，它不成比例地影响到来自某些特定族裔和社会经济少数群体的人。特别是，自大流行开始以来，很明显，来自黑人或非裔美国人背景的人似乎受到病毒的严重打击，造成了巨大的感染差距。对这些族裔群体的观察到的异常影响可能是由于其他已知风险因素的共同发生，包括合并症、贫困、教育水平、获得医疗保健的机会、居住隔离和对治疗的反应，尽管这些因素似乎无法完全深入地解释非裔美国人感染和死亡人数过多的原因。在这里，我们引入扩散隔离的概念，即由于流动性和通勤习惯，给定人群在内部聚集或暴露于其他人群的程度。通过分析美国主要城市的人口普查和流动数据，我们发现在 COVID-19 大流行初期，非裔美国人社区每周 COVID-19 发病率和死亡率的超额与他们的扩散隔离程度显著相关。研究结果证实，了解人们通勤的地点而不是他们居住的地点，对于控制和遏制传染病的传播可能更为重要。
