Network-based community detection of early-stage COVID-19 pandemic based on the international geographical distance

COVID-19 pandemic erupted from Wuhan/China, has impacted the whole world in many ways drastically. Understanding such a pandemic, taking necessary precautions, and controlling a potential epidemic is essential. Modules and communities are typically and frequently represented in networks and analyzed with specific methods. Epidemic network analysis is a powerful method that provides us different information to interpret and make accurate decisions for pandemic events. The randomness of epidemic networks is considerably high; hence, it is essential to obtain consistent information from such networks. In this study, we proposed the network-based community detection of the early-stage COVID-19 associated with the basic reproduction number and the geographical distance between country locations. Worldwide confirmed cases between 22/01/2020 and 08/06/2020 had been analyzed for ten-day periods. For this purpose, the Community Detection method was used. Therefore, (i) the community regions, (ii) the change of these regions and weighted nodal degrees of confirmed cases during the COVID-19, (iii) the relations between locations, and (iv) locations or regions which played an important role during the spread of this disease were obtained. The results of this study may help to reduce the reproduction number by lowering the average rate of contact in the early stage of a new pandemic.