Complex system properties in the spreading of COVID-19 pandemic

Abstract

The objective of the present study was to show that the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic around the world shows complex system properties such as lognormal laws, temporal fluctuation scaling, and time correlation. First, the daily cumulative number of confirmed cases and deaths is distributed among countries as lognormals such that the time series exhibit a temporal fluctuation scaling. Second, the daily return time series of cases and deaths per day have associated Levy stable distributions and they have time correlation. The idea was to draw attention to the fact that the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic can be seen as a complex system, and, thus, contribute to the identification of the structural properties of this system, which is relevant as it is expected that future stochastic models describing the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic from a microscopic dynamics perspective should be able to explain the emergence of the structural properties identified here.

Keywords

• COVID-19 pandemic
• Spread
• Time series
• Lognormal and Levy stable distributions
• Temporal fluctuation scaling
• Time correlation