A Marginalized Zero-Inflated Negative Binomial Model for Spatial Data: Modeling COVID-19 Deaths in Georgia

Spatial count data with an abundance of zeros arise commonly in disease mapping studies. Typically, these data are analyzed using zero-inflated models, which comprise a mixture of a point mass at zero and an ordinary count distribution, such as the Poisson or negative binomial. However, due to their mixture representation, conventional zero-inflated models are challenging to explain in practice because the parameter estimates have conditional latent-class interpretations. As an alternative, several authors have proposed marginalized zero-inflated models that simultaneously model the excess zeros and the marginal mean, leading to a parameterization that more closely aligns with ordinary count models. Motivated by a study examining predictors of COVID-19 death rates, we develop a spatiotemporal marginalized zero-inflated negative binomial model that directly models the marginal mean, thus extending marginalized zero-inflated models to the spatial setting. To capture the spatiotemporal heterogeneity in the data, we introduce region-level covariates, smooth temporal effects, and spatially correlated random effects to model both the excess zeros and the marginal mean. For estimation, we adopt a Bayesian approach that combines full-conditional Gibbs sampling and Metropolis–Hastings steps. We investigate features of the model and use the model to identify key predictors of COVID-19 deaths in the US state of Georgia during the 2021 calendar year.