Modeling the Global Dynamic Contagion of COVID-19

The COVID-19 infections have profoundly and negatively impacted the whole world. Hence, we have modeled the dynamic spread of global COVID-19 infections with the connectedness approach based on the TVP-VAR model, using the data of confirmed COVID-19 cases during the period of March 23rd, 2020 to September 10th, 2021 in 18 countries. The results imply that, (i) the United States, the United Kingdom and Indonesia are global epidemic centers, among which the United States has the highest degree of the contagion of the COVID-19 infections, which is stable. South Korea, France and Italy are the main receiver of the contagion of the COVID-19 infections, and South Korea has been the most severely affected by the overseas epidemic; (ii) there is a negative correlation between the timeliness, effectiveness and mandatory nature of government policies and the risk of the associated countries COVID-19 epidemic affecting, as well as the magnitude of the net contagion of domestic COVID-19; (iii) the severity of domestic COVID-19 epidemics in the United States and Canada, Canada and Mexico, Indonesia and Canada is almost equivalent, especially for the United States, Canada and Mexico, whose domestic epidemics are with the same tendency; (iv) the COVID-19 epidemic has spread though not only the central divergence manner and chain mode of transmission, but also the way of feedback loop. Thus, more efforts should be made by the governments to enhance the pertinence and compulsion of their epidemic prevention policies and establish a systematic and efficient risk assessment mechanism for public health emergencies.