Socio-spatial aspects contributing to the spread of COVID-19 in Yogyakarta Province (Indonesia)

Abstract

In the early pandemic, the positive cases of COVID-19 predominately occurred in the big cities in Indonesia. However, the virus spread rapidly and extensively across the cities and districts. This shows that the COVID-19 pandemic is limited to urban areas and has spread widely to more remote area This study aims to investigate the correlation between socio-economic characteristics against the spread of confirmed COVID-19 cases. In this study, we collected data from residents with confirmed positive for COVID-19 and their socio-economic profiles in 78 subdistricts in the Special Region of Yogyakarta province, Indonesia. The collected data were statistically analyzed in three sequential steps, including a correlation test, classic assumption test (e. g., normality test, homoscedasticity test, and non-multicollinearity test), and multiple regression test to determine the correlation between the COVID-19-infected population and the socio-economic data in each subdistrict (as dependent variables). The results demonstrated that regions with more urban character, particularly socio-economic, were more susceptible to COVID-19 infection during the first year of the pandemic. However, the socio-spatial aspects such as population density as one of the requirements for the “compact cities” and the proportion of built-up land area were not contributing factors to the viral transmission. Socio-spatial aspects may influence the risk of virus transmission, but not as significantly as social factors and human behavior in an area. Therefore, efforts to prevent the spread of the COVID-19 virus must be more focused on social factors and human behavior.