Spatial Distribution of COVID-19 and Its Influential Factors in the City of Philadelphia

COVID-19 has been a significant public health event threatening human life across the world for the past two years. Despite the invention and widespread use of vaccines, new variants such as Delta and Omicron continue to emerge, and the epidemic is still going on. This study was to explore the spatial distribution of COVID-19 positive cases and their potential influential factors in the City of Philadelphia. We visualized the change of COVID spatial patterns from June 4, 2020, to November 30, 2021, and constructed Geographically Weighted Regression (GWR) models to identify factors that were associated with the distribution. Our results indicated that there was significant spatial clustering of COVID cases in Philadelphia, with the north-central region consistently being the most severe area. The GWR model identified that health insurance and work travel time were two significant influential factors of COVID cases distribution in the city. The area with a higher population of people who have no health insurance or whose travel time to work is more than an hour has a higher number of positive cases. Targeted prevention strategies should pay attention to the vulnerable people and vary in different regions.