Exploring the roles of high-speed train, air and coach services in the spread of COVID-19 in China

Abstract

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.

COVID-19 and transport: Findings from a world-wide expert survey

“…Sokadjo and Atchadé ( 2020 ) found that at the global level, passenger air traffic is positively related to the number of infections. Zhang et al (2020a) showed that infection cases in China were strongly associated with frequencies of flights and high-speed trains, while Zhang et al (2020b) revealed the imported case risk imposed by foreign countries on Chinese provinces and further confirmed the effectiveness of China's strict restriction on inbound flights after March 26 in dramatically reducing the imported case risk. From a different angle, Zhang et al (2020) and Cartenì et al ( 2021 ) observed a strong positive correlation between transport accessibility and the infection cases in Japan and Italy, respectively.…”

The Coupled Impact of Emergency Responses and Population Flows on the COVID‐19 Pandemic in China

“…They may have come into close contact with its carriers (i.e., the population flow out of Wuhan), which may have introduced COVID‐19. Because the majority of the PPW spread to Hubei, Guangdong, and Zhejiang provinces (Jia et al, 2020), and also due to the low probability of contact and reasonable protection measures taken by transportation systems (Y. Zhang, Zhang, et al, 2020), the impact of population migration was relatively lower than the population moving out of Wuhan.…”

“…The slow and weak emergency response could not prevent epidemic spread caused by population mobility. According to the correlation characteristics and attribution analysis (Table 2 and Figure 5), the PPW played a positive role in developing the epidemic situation in Heilongjiang due to the advanced transportation system (Y. Zhang, Zhang, et al, 2020). The above is closely related to the following fact: Heilongjiang province showed a rising trend when the epidemic situation was generally stable throughout the country.…”

A Cross-Regional Analysis of the COVID-19 Spread during the 2020 Italian Vacation Period: Results from Three Computational Models Are Compared

“…This is unquestionably due to its high infectiveness, but it would not have reached the planetary scale if not for the interconnectedness of the world we live in. As Zhang et al describe in their paper, the centrality of Wuhan and its multiple transport communication hubs (roadways, railways, airports, and boats) played an important role in the spread of the virus in China in the early days of the infection, showing that those regions that required the least travel time from that city were hit earlier and more fiercely [ 1 ].…”

“…Additionally, the already mentioned work by Zhang et al used a kind of gravity model based on the number of infections, which performed a regression analysis of various means of transport in order to investigate how relevant their contribution to the spread of the virus was [ 1 ]. But this kind of papers will not be analyzed here because, as already stated, the study of the contribution to the spread of the virus brought by different modes of transport is out of the scope of our investigations.…”