ABSTRACT

We investigate the evolution of the Chinese Spring Festival travel network during COVID-19 early outbreak (Jan 17 to Feb 23, 2020) in China and explore the impacts of COVID-19 on the evolution of the intercity travel network. We find that the connections of a China city with other 27.9 cities were cut off after the Wuhan lockdown (Jan 23). Correlating the degree centrality of each city and the cumulative numbers of COVID-19 confirmed cases, we find that cities with confirmed cases have 87.63 more indegrees and 97.13 more outdegrees than cities without confirmed cases. We also find that Jan 24 (one day after the Wuhan lockdown) has the highest effect of cumulative cases on indegree that is one additional confirmed case corresponds to 0.159 decreases in indegree. In terms of outdegree, Feb 2 has the highest effect that is one additional confirmed case corresponds to 0.022 decreases in outdegree.