Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Public Health and Surveillance
Date Submitted: Dec 20, 2021
Open Peer Review Period: Dec 20, 2021 - Feb 14, 2022
Date Accepted: Jul 19, 2022
Date Submitted to PubMed: Jul 21, 2022
(closed for review but you can still tweet)
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited. Preprints - unless they show as "accepted" - should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.
Spatiotemporal patterns and progression of the Delta variant of COVID-19 and their health intervention linkages in Southeast Asia
ABSTRACT
Background:
The Delta variant of COVID-19 has presented an unprecedented challenge to Southeast Asia (SEA) countries. Its transmission had shown spatial heterogeneity in SEA after countries adopted different public health interventions during the process. Hence, it is crucial for the public health authority to discover the potential linkages between epidemic progression and corresponding interventions, such that collective and coordinated control measurements can be designed to increase their effectiveness at reducing transmission in SEA.
Objective:
The purpose of this study was to explore potential linkages between spatiotemporal progression of the Delta variant of COVID-19 and non-pharmaceutical intervention (NPI) measures in Southeast Asia. We detected the space-time clusters of outbreaks of COVID-19 and analyzed how the NPI measures relate to the propagation of COVID-19.
Methods:
We collected district-level daily new cases of COVID-19 from June 1, 2021 to October 31, 2021, and district-level population data in Southeast Asia. We adopted prospective space-time scan statistics to identify the space-time clusters. Using cumulative prospective space-time scan statistics, we further identified variations of relative risk across each district at a half-month interval and their potential public health intervention linkages.
Results:
Most districts in Malaysia and Philippines, as well as the capital and surrounding areas in Thailand, Vietnam, and Indonesia exhibited high risk of COVID-19 transmission between June and August. Indonesia successfully mitigated the risk of COVID-19 with the assistance of continuous restrictions, while a number of regions in Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, and Philippines saw an increase of infection risk which is aligned with their loosened restrictions. Continuous strict interventions were effective to mitigate COVID-19, while relaxing restrictions may exacerbate the propagation risk of this epidemic.
Conclusions:
The analyses of space-time clusters and relative risks of districts benefit public health authorities with continuous surveillance of the COVID-19 dynamics using real-time data. International coordination with more synchronized interventions amidst all SEA countries may play a key role in mitigating the progression of COVID-19.
Citation
Request queued. Please wait while the file is being generated. It may take some time.
Copyright
© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.