Giving Compass' Take:

• Research shows that COVID-19 has attacked bigger U.S. cities at higher rates, forcing local officials to respond faster and in more severe ways. 

• This research should inform policy on social distancing measures and future planning for COVID-19 in affected, larger cities. How can donors work with governments to take necessary action? 

• Read about the U.S. cities that are most vulnerable to COVID-19. 

The research shows that, for example, in the New York metropolitan area (pop. approx. 20 million), COVID-19 has spread roughly 2.5 times faster than in Oak Harbor, Washington (pop. approx. 84,000).

But these numbers only represent part of the story of the pandemic, says Luis Bettencourt, a researcher in urban science and ecology and evolution who directs the Mansueto Institute for Urban Innovation at the University of Chicago. Although big cities are dealing with faster growing outbreaks, they may also have the socioeconomic institutions and infrastructure to respond more aggressively—both by enforcing social distancing measures and expanding the capacity of their health care systems.

“You can see large cities being hit first and faster, and then stepping up their responses,” says Bettencourt. “If their response matches the challenge, then they have a chance to go through this first surge faster, and also to be better prepared for the future.

The researchers aggregated county-level data from that timeframe to the city level, subtracting total deaths to approximate the number of early active cases. They estimated some of the highest growth rates in the New York-Newark-New Jersey area (roughly 50% per day), the Chicagoland area (43%), the greater Los Angeles area (28%), and the Seattle area (15%).

“The denser the city, the more easily disease can spread,” says Marc Berman, an associate professor in the psychology department. “It’s intuitive, but we put numbers behind it. This evidence is important from a public policy standpoint, because you have some politicians really not taking some of these things sufficiently seriously.

“It says here in the data: If you are in larger cities, you definitely have to be more careful, you have to act faster, and you have to engage in more intense social distancing.”

Read the full article about larger cities during COVID-19 at Futurity.