Using data from Cook County Jail, in Chicago, Illinois, one of the largest known nodes of SARS-CoV-2 spread, the paper analyzes the relationship between jailing practices and community infections at the zip-code level. Jail cycling is found to be a significant predictor of SARS-CoV-2 infection, accounting for 55 percent of the variance in case rates across zip codes in Chicago and 37 percent in Illinois. By comparison, jail cycling far exceeds race, poverty, public transit utilization, and population density as a predictor of variance. The data suggest that cycling through Cook County Jail alone is associated with 15.7 percent of all documented novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) cases in Illinois and 15.9 percent in Chicago as of April 19, 2020.

Link to the paper here. 

Posted by Daniel Spiro,

Uppsala University