June 20/20 Interim Report: H-K COVID-19 Study

Abstract

The prospect of co-occurrence of Influenza (Seasonal Flu) and COVID-19 is potentially a worrisome future development that could get worse if infections are co-located. In other words, if they share both time and space and where mitigating the dual threats might be difficult and poses new challenges.

In this part of the interim report we do a exploratory analyses of discovering spatial overlaps between seasonal flu/pneumonia deaths reported by CDC and COVID-19 infections for all the counties in the Contiguous U.S. Also where such data is available we are exploring whether there is an overlap between 2019-2020 Seasonal Flu cases and the COVID-19 cases.

The preliminary results are pointing to a very interesting finding: that there is almost no spatial overlap between either the FLI (Flu like Infection) deaths and COVID-19 OR FLI cases and COVID-19 cases.

The preliminary results are presented in a series of maps and charts.

This very interesting finding of near "null" spatial overlap between the two will be revisited and a detailed spatio-temporal analyses will be presented over he next few weeks.

Note: Funding Information: We are funded by a small education research grant from the Schar Foundation.

Declaration of Interest: We have no conflict of interest with respect to our research or findings.

Keywords: COVID-19, Seasonal Flu, FLI Mortality, Spatial Analysis

JEL Classification: Y10, Y20, Y90