Tobler's law and wavefront patterns in the spatial spread of COVID-19 across Europe during the Delta and Omicron waves.

AIMS: Epidemic wavefront models predict the spread of medieval pandemics such as the plague well. Our aim was to explore whether they contribute to understanding the spread of COVID-19, the first truly global pandemic of the 21st century with its fast and frequent international travel links. METHODS: We analysed the spatial spread of reaching a threshold of very high incidence of new daily infections of the virus across European countries in the autumn of 2021 in which the Delta variant was dominant, as well as an even higher threshold of incidence in the subsequent spread of infections across the same set of countries during the winter of 2021/2022 when the Omicron variant of the virus became dominant. RESULTS: We found patterns that are consistent with wavefront models for both periods of the pandemic in Europe. CONCLUSIONS: Modern means of transportation strongly accelerated the spread of the virus and typically generated diffusion patterns along bidirectional constrained mobility networks in addition to stochastic diffusion processes. However, since the majority of mobility, including mobility across international borders, is over short distances, wavefront patterns in the spread of a pandemic are still to be expected.

Does ‘Data fudging’ explain the autocratic advantage? Evidence from the gap between Official Covid-19 mortality and excess mortality

Governments can underreport Covid-19 mortality to make their performance appear more successful than it is. Autocracies are more likely to ‘fudge’ these data since many autocratic regimes restrict media freedom and thus can prevent domestic media from reporting evidence of undercounting deaths. Autocracies also enjoy greater leverage over reporting health authorities to either fudge data or adopt restrictive definitions of what constitutes Covid-19 mortality. Controlling for other factors that explain official Covid-19 mortality, excess mortality and the difference between the two, our results suggest that any apparent ‘autocratic advantage’ in fighting the pandemic is likely to only exist in official Covid-19 mortality. Analyzing the gap between excess mortality and official Covid-19 mortality we find that autocracies on average have a larger gap between official Covid-19 mortality data and excess mortality data, which points towards ‘autocratic data fudging’ of their official Covid-19 mortality statistics.

The Politics of Covid-19 Containment Policies in europe.

Do partisan preferences, the electoral system, checks on government, political fragmentation, civil liberties and trust contribute to explaining the stringency of containment policies in European countries? Empirical studies suggest that political science theories have helped very little in understanding European democracies' political response to the pandemic's first wave. We argue in this article that the negligible effect of politics, broadly defined, is confined to the first wave and that during subsequent waves over the autumn 2020 to spring 2021 season some of the above political factors contribute to our understanding of variation in countries' response. Employing a sample of 26 European democracies analyzing daily data on the stringency of adopted containment policies we provide evidence that politics does not matter during the first wave but is substantively important during later waves.

The strategy of protest against Covid-19 containment policies in Germany.

OBJECTIVES: The article analyzes the epidemiological and political logics of protest against containment policies in Germany. To maximize the mobilization potential, protest organizers organize more protest events when Covid-19 mortality rates are low, the stringency of containment policies is high, and in districts in which the vote share of mainstream parties is traditionally low. METHOD: Using a negative binomial model, we analyze the number of protest events in a sample of 401 German districts over the period from March to May 2020. RESULTS: We find robust positive predicted effects of the stringency of containment policies and negative predicted effects for the mortality rate and the strengths of mainstream parties. CONCLUSION: We interpret these findings as evidence of the strategic behavior of protest organizers that target protest participation and mobilization to keep the movement alive and potentially grow it.

The logics of COVID-19 travel restrictions between European countries.

Objectives: The article analyzes the existence of bilateral travel restrictions between European countries during the second wave of the Sars-CoV-2 pandemic. The paper tests three sets of theoretically derived predictions, which follow epidemiological, economic, and political logics. Method: We analyze a sample of directed bilateral travel restrictions between 27 European countries: 27.26 = 702 country dyads over a period of 6 months during the second wave of the pandemic. Results: We find robust and relevant results for the difference in incidence rates, for income from tourism, for trust in government and public administration and for political inclusiveness. Conclusion: Our analyses demonstrates that economic and political logics exert a strong influence on containment measures and thus stress the relevance of forming a large societal and political coalition against the pandemic.

Fueling the Covid-19 pandemic: summer school holidays and incidence rates in German districts.

BACKGROUND: The Robert-Koch-Institute reports that during the summer holiday period a foreign country is stated as the most likely place of infection for an average of 27 and a maximum of 49% of new SARS-CoV-2 infections in Germany. METHODS: Cross-sectional study on observational data. In Germany, summer school holidays are coordinated between states and spread out over 13 weeks. Employing a dynamic model with district fixed effects, we analyze the association between these holidays and weekly incidence rates across 401 German districts. RESULTS: We find effects of the holiday period of around 45% of the average district incidence rates in Germany during their respective final week of holidays and the 2 weeks after holidays end. Western states tend to experience stronger effects than Eastern states. We also find statistically significant interaction effects of school holidays with per capita taxable income and the share of foreign residents in a district's population. CONCLUSIONS: Our results suggest that changed behavior during the holiday season accelerated the pandemic and made it considerably more difficult for public health authorities to contain the spread of the virus by means of contact tracing. Germany's public health authorities did not prepare adequately for this acceleration.

The pandemic predominantly hits poor neighbourhoods? SARS-CoV-2 infections and COVID-19 fatalities in German districts.

BACKGROUND: Reports from the UK and the USA suggest that coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) predominantly affects poorer neighbourhoods. This article paints a more complex picture by distinguishing between a first and second phase of the pandemic. The initial spread of infections and its correlation with socio-economic factors depends on how the virus first entered a country. The second phase of the pandemic begins when individuals start taking precautionary measures and governments implement lockdowns. In this phase, the spread of the virus depends on the ability of individuals to socially distance themselves, which is to some extent socially stratified. METHODS: We analyze the geographical distribution of known cumulative cases and fatalities per capita in an ecological analysis across local districts in Germany distinguishing between the first and the second phase of the pandemic. RESULTS: In Germany, the virus first entered via individuals returning from skiing in the Alps and other international travel. In this first phase, we find a positive association between the wealth of a district and infection rates and a negative association with indicators of social deprivation. During the second phase and controlling for path dependency, districts with a higher share of university-educated employees record fewer new infections and deaths and richer districts record fewer deaths, districts with a higher unemployment rate record more deaths. CONCLUSIONS: The social stratification of COVID-19 changes substantively across the two phases of the pandemic in Germany. Only in the second phase and controlling for temporal dependence does COVID-19 predominantly hit poorer districts.

COVID-19 does not stop at open borders: Spatial contagion among local authority districts during England's first wave.

Infectious diseases generate spatial dependence or contagion not only between individuals but also between geographical units. New infections in one local district do not just depend on properties of the district, but also on the strength of social ties of its population with populations in other districts and their own degree of infectiousness. We show that SARS-CoV-2 infections during the first wave of the pandemic spread across district borders in England as a function of pre-crisis commute to work streams between districts. Crucially, the strength of this spatial contagion depends on the phase of the epidemic. In the first pre-lockdown phase, the spread of the virus across district borders is high. During the lockdown period, the cross-border spread of new infections slows down significantly. Spatial contagion increases again after the lockdown is eased but not statistically significantly so.