Unmasking COVID-19 Vulnerability in Nigeria: Mapping Risks Beyond Urban Hotspots

The COVID-19 pandemic has presented significant challenges in Nigeria's public health systems since the first case reported on February 27, 2020. This study investigated key factors that contribute to state vulnerability, quantifying them through a composite risk score integrating population density (weighted 0.2), poverty (0.4), access to healthcare (0.3), and age risk (0.1), adjusted by normalized case rates per 100,000. The states were categorized into low-, medium-, and high-density areas to analyze trends and identify hotspots using geographic information system (GIS) mapping. The findings revealed that high-density urban areas, such as Lagos, which account for 35.4\% of national cases, had the highest risk scores (e.g., Lagos: 673.47 vs. national average: 28.16). These results align with global and local studies on the spatial variability of COVID-19 in Nigeria, including international frameworks such as the CDC Social Vulnerability Index. Google Trends data highlighted variations in public health awareness, serving as a supplementary analysis to contextualize vulnerability. The risk score provides a prioritization tool for policy makers to allocate testing, vaccines, and healthcare resources to high-risk areas, although data gaps and rural underreporting call for further research. This framework can extend to other infectious diseases, offering lessons for future pandemics in resource-limited settings.