Calculation of DTW

DTW is an algorithm for measuring the similarity between 2 time series by determining the shortest total distances between the 2 series [38]. It is useful to detect the leader-follower interaction. We used the Python library dtw-python (version 1.1.12) to create the DTW-aligned plots [39]. The algorithm in the library associates a node from the query time series (in our case, network statistics, network density, and global clustering coefficients) to a node from the template time series (confirmed COVID-19 cases in and severity risk score [SRS]) with the lowest distances.