Impact of aviation and economic activity on COVID-19 in Chile
The global COVID-19 pandemic reached Chile in less than four months after the first recorded case in 2019. This event triggered preventive and reactive measures by the executive and society in general to reduce the speed of contagion and the pressure on the health network. One of those measures involved the closure of borders, which continues to affect both international and domestic air travel. A new article, with the participation of Víctor Cobs Muñoz and in collaboration with peers from Chile's Alberto Hurtado and Austral de Chile Universities, examines the relationship between commercial air traffic and economic activity on the number of COVID-19 infections and deaths across Chilean regions. Using charts, correlations, and regressions, the study finds that from the third week after the outbreak of the pandemic, there was a drastic decrease in commercial air traffic, although some regions resumed air traffic later on. There is a correlation between air traffic, mining activity in the North of the country and the level of infection, in addition to the fact that there was a high level of COVID-19 in this macro-zone. Furthermore, it was found that there is a high and significant correlation between population size and the number of cases of infection, showing that there is a process of spatial spread of the pandemic through a hierarchical structure determined by the distribution of the Chilean population. Although the present results are exploratory and subject to ongoing discussion, they contribute to clarifying the processes that were already indicated and taking place in the first months of the pandemic.
Read the full paper published in Geográfica Del Sur (in Spanish):
Maturana, F., Cobs-Muñoz, V. and Pérez, C. (2021): Six months of COVID-19 in Chile: Exploring the role of air traffic and the labor market in the balance of infections and deaths. Geográfica Del Sur, 9(2). DOI: 10.29393/GS9-8SMCC20008.