To understand the roles of different transport modes in the spread of COVID-19 pandemic across Chinese cities, this paper looks at the factors influencing the number of imported cases from Wuhan and the spread speed and pattern of the pandemic. We find that frequencies of air flights and high-speed train (HST) services out of Wuhan are significantly associated with the number of COVID-19 cases in the destination cities. The presence of an airport or HST station at a city is significantly related to the speed of the pandemic spread, but its link with the total number of confirmed cases is weak. The farther the distance from Wuhan, the lower number of cases in a city and the slower the dissemination of the pandemic. The longitude and latitude coordinates do not have a significant relationship with the number of total cases but can increase the speed of the COVID-19 spread. Specifically, cities in the higher longitudinal region tended to record a COVID-19 case earlier than their counterparties in the west. Cities in the north were more likely to report the first case later than those in the south. The pandemic may emerge in large cities earlier than in small cities as GDP is a factor positively associated with the spread speed.

The current outbreak of COVID-19 is an unprecedented event in air transportation. This is probably the first time that global aviation contributed to the planet-wide spread of a pandemic, with casualties in over two hundred countries. As of August 23rd, 2020, the number of infected cases has topped 23 million, reportedly relating to more than 800,000 deaths worldwide. However, there is also a second side of the pandemic: it has led to an unmatched singularity in the global air transportation system. In what could be considered a highly uncoordinated, almost chaotic manner, countries have closed their borders, and people are reluctant/unable to travel due to country-specific lock-down measures. Accordingly, aviation is one of the industries that has been suffering most due to the consequences of the pandemic outbreak, despite probably being one of its largest initial drivers. In this study, we investigate the impact of COVID-19 on global air transportation at different scales, ranging from worldwide airport networks where airports are nodes and links between airports exist when direct flights exist, to international country networks where countries are contracted as nodes, and to domestic airport networks for representative countries/regions. We focus on the spatial-temporal evolutionary dynamics of COVID-19 in air transportation networks. Our study provides a comprehensive empirical analysis on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on aviation from a complex system perspective using network science tools.

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