Intra-urban inequalities and Covid-19: an analysis of social isolation in the city of Porto Alegre

Abstract The Covid-19 pandemic has revealed territorial inequalities that were already present in Brazilian cities. One way in which these inequalities were expressed was the possibility of staying at home as a form of prevention. Analyzing a social isolation index based on cell phone location data, this paper shows that isolation in the city of Porto Alegre did not happen homogeneously in the territory. Factors such as occupation, income and the HDI for each region of the city are related to the different isolation rates that were found and, consequently, help us to understand the different degrees of exposure to the virus.