Fig. 6

Full resolution comparison of network component area and total confirmed case distributions for Wuhan (left) and the US Northeast Corridor (right). Despite very different network configurations, both examples show spatial gradients in number of confirmed cases with distance from a central hotspot (Wuhan & NYC), however the much larger Northeast Corridor shows strong gradients and multiple local maxima within a single connected component while the smaller components surrounding Wuhan show much smaller numbers of cases. While the Northeast Corridor component is large relative to the spatial gradient in cases, the Wuhan component is much smaller and comparable to the scale of the gradient observed in the NYC hotspot. The distributions are also a result of the disparity in spatial resolution between the 700 m VIIRS resolution and the widely varying sizes of county administrative units within which case counts are aggregated. Each area 500 × 500 km