Factors affecting the COVID-19 risk in the US counties: an innovative approach by combining unsupervised and supervised learning

World Health Organization (WHO) reported that 80% of patients experienced these symptoms mildly. However, older people ( 60 years old) and persons with co-morbid diseases are at a higher risk for severe symptoms and death (Velavan & Meyer, 2020; World Health Organization, 2020). Besides, younger patients with no underlying disease might also experience severe symptoms or even death (Jahromi, Avazpour, et al., 2020; The Washington Post, 2020; Yousefzadegan & Rezaei, 2020). The first positive case of COVID-19 in the United States was reported in the state of Washington on January 20, 2020. By March 17, 2020, Covid-19 has spread across all US states (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2020; Saad B. Omer et al., 2020). Figure 1 shows the aggregated COVID-19 positive case and death count maps for all US states until November 6, 2020. Reports showed that on November 6, 2020, the top states for positive COVID-19 cases are California, Texas, Florida, New York, and Illinois, while the top 5 states for death cases are New York, Texas, California, New Jersey, and Florida.