Figure 2.

Clustering of spreading patterns. Spreading dynamics were clustered based on their similarity to either of three groups. Without spatial information of the time series alone, these yield three spatially coherent regions. The median of all curves of each group shows the dominating COVID-19 spreading dynamics of these regions. All the curves display an exponentially fast onset of case numbers in October 2020. It could be halted or decelerated in Groups 1 and 3 during November by the partial shutdown but rose up again by December. In Group 2, the partial shutdown only slowed down the overall infection spreading to a non-exponential, but at least linear, increase in incidence numbers per week. In contrary, there was no stopping in Group 2, where daily reported cases further increased continuously.