Population flow drives spatio-temporal distribution of COVID-19 in China

Abstract

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic has affected all sectors of the economy and society. To understand the impact of the pandemic on rms in China and suggest responding public policies, we investigated rms in Guangdong Province (a Province with the highest Gross Domestic Product in China). Methods: The survey sample included 524 rms in 15 cities in Guangdong Province. We chose these rms from list published by the government, considering the industrial characteristics of Guangdong province and rm size. The questionnaire comprised of four categories and included 17 questions was developed based on previous studies carried out by OECD. The executives of rms were contacted by phone or WeChat, and were invited to answer self-administered questionnaires through an on-line survey platform. The data was analyzed by SPSS. Results: The following ndings are worth to be noticed: (1) 48.7% of rms maintained stability, and 35.1% of the rms experienced a halt in operation or faced closure; (2) Nearly 70%-90% of the rms are or are willing to transform to online marketing, remote o ce work, and digital operations. (3) 46% of rms believe that there will be a certain loss this year, and 83.5% expected a decreasing trend of the city's GDP growth. Conclusions: rms in Guangdong Province have faced great challenges in the epidemic. The rms' production and operation activities are limited, and risks are faced. It is necessary to effectively implement supporting policies to profoundly lower production costs for rms, and help rms survive the di cult period, and even gradually transit to normal business operation status. Background The current COVID-19 is a rapidly evolving global challenge and like any pandemic, it weakens health systems, costs lives, and also poses great risks to the global economy and security [1, 2, 3, 4]. According to the data from WHO (World Health Organization) and Johns Hopkins University, till the middle of June 2020, the global COVID-19 pandemic has con rmed more than 7.5 million cases, causing nearly 420 thousand deaths in around 215 countries (https://www.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html). COVID-19 pandemic is a public health emergency. It's a sudden outbreak that causes or is likely to cause serious public health damages including major infectious diseases, mass unexplained diseases, major food and occupational poisonings or other serious public health issues [5]. Global economic growth is expected to decrease continually on account of the epidemic impact throughout the world [6, 7]. According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD)'s forecast, the global GDP (Gross Domestic Product) growth rate will drop to 2.4% in 2020 [3]. The current continuous worldwide spread of COVID-19 has greatly increased the risk of uncertainty and global recession [8, 9][1]. Supply chain disruption, shrinking demand for consumption and investment, signi cant weakening of economic activities, and damaged market con dence have put more severe tests on the resilience of relevant economies, the level of...

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