Changing travel patterns in China during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic

  1. Hamish Gibbs
  2. Yang Liu
  3. Carl A. B. Pearson
  4. Christopher I. Jarvis
  5. Chris Grundy
  6. Billy J. Quilty
  7. Charlie Diamond
  8. LSHTM CMMID COVID-19 working group
  9. David Simons
  10. Amy Gimma
  11. Quentin J. Leclerc
  12. Megan Auzenbergs
  13. Rachel Lowe
  14. Kathleen O’Reilly
  15. Matthew Quaife
  16. Joel Hellewell
  17. Gwenan M. Knight
  18. Thibaut Jombart
  19. Petra Klepac
  20. Simon R. Procter
  21. Arminder K. Deol
  22. Eleanor M. Rees
  23. Stefan Flasche
  24. Adam J. Kucharski
  25. Sam Abbott
  26. Fiona Yueqian Sun
  27. Akira Endo
  28. Graham Medley
  29. James D. Munday
  30. Sophie R. Meakin
  31. Nikos I. Bosse
  32. W. John Edmunds
  33. Nicholas G. Davies
  34. Kiesha Prem
  35. Stéphane Hué
  36. C. Julian Villabona-Arenas
  37. Emily S. Nightingale
  38. Rein M. G. J. Houben
  39. Anna M. Foss
  40. Damien C. Tully
  41. Jon C. Emery
  42. Kevin van Zandvoort
  43. Katherine E. Atkins
  44. Alicia Rosello
  45. Sebastian Funk
  46. Mark Jit
  47. Samuel Clifford
  48. Timothy W. Russell
  49. Rosalind M. Eggo

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Abstract

Understanding changes in human mobility in the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic is crucial for assessing the impacts of travel restrictions designed to reduce disease spread. Here, relying on data from mainland China, we investigate the spatio-temporal characteristics of human mobility between 1st January and 1st March 2020, and discuss their public health implications. An outbound travel surge from Wuhan before travel restrictions were implemented was also observed across China due to the Lunar New Year, indicating that holiday travel may have played a larger role in mobility changes compared to impending travel restrictions. Holiday travel also shifted healthcare pressure related to COVID-19 towards locations with lower healthcare capacity. Network analyses showed no sign of major changes in the transportation network after Lunar New Year. Changes observed were temporary and did not lead to structural reorganisation of the transportation network during the study period.

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    SciScore for 10.1101/2020.05.14.20101824: (What is this?)

    Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.

    Table 1: Rigor

    NIH rigor criteria are not applicable to paper type.

    Table 2: Resources

    No key resources detected.

    Results from OddPub: Thank you for sharing your code.

    Results from LimitationRecognizer: We detected the following sentences addressing limitations in the study:
    Mobility data from Baidu Huiyan has some limitations. For example, travel volumes were collected on an eight-hourly basis between each pair of prefectures and then aggregated to day- and prefecture-level, which does not allow analysis of trips longer than a day. In a country the size of China, such trips may be relatively frequent. Pairwise travel patterns before 1 January 2020 are not available, which makes it challenging to determine baseline travel patterns. Additionally, movement patterns from Baidu Huiyan reflect the movement of Baidu users, which may be a non-random subset of the general population in mainland China26. This study analysed the human mobility patterns around China during different stages of the local COVID-19 epidemics, from early Chunyun to Wuhan’s cordon sanitaire and other travel restrictions. By the start of March 2020, regional inter-prefecture movements had started to recover. Many countries have now implemented similar travel restrictions to reduce disease transmission. Understanding the implications of travel patterns before, during, and following travel restrictions is valuable for informing public health interventions, surveillance, and healthcare demand planning globally.

    Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.

    Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.

    Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.

    Results from rtransparent:
    • Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • No protocol registration statement was detected.

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  2. Version published to 10.1038/s41467-020-18783-0
  3. Version published to 10.1101/2020.05.14.20101824v1 on medRxiv