The spatial correlation between the spread of covid-19 and vulnerable urban areas in santiago de chile

José Francisco Vergara-Perucich*, Juan Correa-Parra, Carlos Aguirre-Nuñez

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

17 Scopus citations

Abstract

This article identifies the spatial correlation between the social determinants of health in the housing area (housing prices, overcrowding, poor-quality building materials, and household socioeconomic vulnerability) and the spread of COVID-19 in Santiago de Chile. The research used data from the 2017 Census conducted by the National Institute of Statistics of Chile and data on confirmed cases of COVID-19 (PCR) by communes provided by/obtained from Chile’s Ministry of Health. The article provides a two-fold examination/analysis of the spatial correlation using the Pearson measure to observe how the virus spread from areas with high-quality housing in the early stage of the contagion to then become concentrated in areas with low-quality of housing. The second examination/analysis is a multiple linear regression to identify the housing factors that inform virus propagation. The test results show that of the four social determinants of health relating to housing assessed here, housing prices is the variable that best predicts how the social determinants of health based on housing explain the progress of the pandemic for the Santiago case, following the collinearity factors according to the data used in this study. The conclusions suggest that public policy should treat housing quality as a factor in public health and health risks that needs to be addressed with a transdisciplinary approach to urban planning in Chile.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)21-35
Number of pages15
JournalCritical Housing Analysis
Volume7
Issue number2
DOIs
StatePublished - 2020
Externally publishedYes

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2020 Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, Institute of Sociology. All rights reserved.

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Geography, Planning and Development
  • Sociology and Political Science
  • Urban Studies

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