Correlations between urban and demographic data and COVID-19 data: a case study in Fortaleza, Brazil

COVID-19 was a sanitary crisis of international impact. However, its effects weren't experienced equally. In Fortaleza, epidemiological reports (2021;2022) point to different infection patterns between high Human Development Index (HDI) and low HDI neighborhoods, which surfaced the hypothesis that certain territories' characteristics could correlate to COVID-19 data. This article describes a phase of a three-phase research, whose objective is to identify correlations between urban and demographic (UD) data to COVID-19 data. To this, a literature review was done to select seven UD variables and four COVID-19 ones, then, Spearman's correlation was applied in four pandemic time frames (TF). Results show that literacy rates, monthly income and energy have either low or moderate positive correlations with contamination rates in most TF. However, they've shown low or moderate correlations with lethality rates in three TF. Population density showed low positive correlations to either lethality rates or total number of deaths in three TF.