A spatio-temporal modelling of Covid-19 infections in Toronto’s neighbourhoods
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Introduction & Objective: Besides age and sex as established risk factors of COVID-19 infection, social factor is found to be a determinant, with people of lower socioeconomic status suffer disproportionately from the disease. The city of Toronto has one of the highest COVID-19 infection rates in Canada. This analysis aims to explore the socioeconomic correlates associated with COVID-19 infection and the temporal trends among different age groups in Toronto using geospatial modeling. Methods: A Bayesian spatio-temporal analysis was conducted using public COVID-19 cases data for Toronto. The case data were modeled using the Besag-York-Mollie (BYM) model, implemented in R-INLA. The model adjusted for age, sex, neighbourhood-level socioeconomic factors, crime rates, and population density. Random effects were included to account for neighbourhood-level variation and for spatial autocorrelation. Temporal trends of COVID-19 cases were modelled using second-order random walks to allow non-parametric estimations. Results: The model estimates showed that men are at higher risk of COVID-19 infection. Among neighbourhood factors, higher home prices, education level, and population density are at lower risks, while belonging to an improvement area showed elevated risks. The temporal trends differed by age, with ages 20-59 showed increased risks over time, compared to the youngest and older age groups. Model predictions showed that northwest Toronto has higher risk compared to the rest of Toronto. Conclusion: The higher COVID-19 infection risks in the Northwest will require increase public health effort to control disease spread in this area. The ecological correlates identified in this analysis will also help to guide the ongoing vaccination plans.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".