Mixed-effects zero-inflated Poisson regression for analyzing the spread of COVID-19 in Daejeon

This paper aims to help prevent the spread of COVID-19 by analyzing confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Daejeon. A high volume of visitors, downtown areas, and psychological fatigue with prolonged social distancing were considered as risk factors associated with the spread of COVID-19. We considered the weekly confirmed cases in each administrative district as a response variable. Explanatory variables were the number of passengers getting off at a bus station in each administrative district and the elapsed time since the Korean government had imposed distancing in daily life. We employed a mixed-effects zero-inflated Poisson regression model because the number of cases was repeatedly measured with excess zero-count data. We conducted k-means clustering to identify three groups of administrative districts having different characteristics in terms of the number of bars, the population size, and the distance to the closest college. Considering that the number of confirmed cases might vary depending on districts' characteristics, the clustering information was incorporated as a categorical explanatory variable. We found that Covid-19 was more prevalent as population size increased and a district is downtown. As the number of passengers getting off at a downtown district increased, the confirmed cases significantly increased.