SEIS MESES DE COVID-19 EN CHILE: EXPLORANDO EL ROL DEL TRÁFICO AÉREO Y EL MERCADO DEL TRABAJO EN EL BALANCE DE CONTAGIOS Y FALLECIDOS

Abstract

: The global pandemic of COVID-19 has spread so rapidly that it has reached Chile in less than four months since its first recorded case in 2019. This important event in the epidemiological context of the country triggers preventive and reactive measures from the executive and the society in general in order to reduce the pace of contagion and the pressure on the healthcare network. One of these measures is the closing of borders, affecting both, international and domestic flights. This article explores the relationship between commercial air traffic and the branch of economic activity with the number of COVID-19 infections and deaths in Chilean regions. For this purpose, by means of combined graphs, correlations, and regressions, we show that there was a drastic decrease in commercial flights from the third week after the pandemic was declared; however, some regions resumed flights later on. A relationship is observed between air traffic, mining production activities in northern Chile, and the level of infection, in addition to the fact that this macro-zone has presented high levels of Covid-19. Moreover, we found that there is a high and significant correlation between the population size and infection-deaths, showing a process of spatial diffusion of the pandemic through a hierarchical structure framed by the distribution of the Chilean population. Although the results presented here are exploratory and remain open to discussion, they contribute to demonstrate the processes already indicated and experienced in the first months of the pandemic.