SOCIO-SPATIAL ASPECTS OF MORTALITY BY COVID-19 IN LARGE CITIES: ACASESTUDYINBELÉM (PA)

Abstract

The outbreak of COVID-19 posed a huge challenge in understanding the factors related to its prevalence and mortality. The aim of this study is to identify social determinants of health that may have a relevant influence on the spatial distribution of deaths caused by the pandemic in large Brazilian cities, through the case study of the city of Belém (PA). Based on official prevalence and death data by neighborhood, it was initially carried out a statistical analysis of the distribution of two variables related to deaths and possible socioeconomic factors that influence the occurrence of these deaths. Then, using a geographic information system, it was performed a spatial analysis of the same variables transformed by local Bayesian smoothing. Due to the data limitations, the study concluded with the formulation of hypotheses: the pandemic caused a higher percentage of deaths in high-income neighborhoods, considering its total population; however, it caused a higher percentage of deaths in low-income neighborhoods taking into account the infected people; the pandemic spreading began in the upper and middle income neighborhoods and then continued on to the others; and governmental measures of social distance have reduced the spread in neighborhoods further away from greater urban occupation.