Lockdowns result in changes in human mobility which may impact the epidemiologic dynamics of SARS-CoV-2
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Abstract
In response to the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, unprecedented travel restrictions and stay-at-home orders were enacted around the world. Ultimately, the public’s response to announcements of lockdowns—defined as restrictions on both local movement or long distance travel—will determine how effective these kinds of interventions are. Here, we evaluate the effects of lockdowns on human mobility and simulate how these changes may affect epidemic spread by analyzing aggregated mobility data from mobile phones. We show that in 2020 following lockdown announcements but prior to their implementation, both local and long distance movement increased in multiple locations, and urban-to-rural migration was observed around the world. To examine how these behavioral responses to lockdown policies may contribute to epidemic spread, we developed a simple agent-based spatial model. Our model shows that this increased movement has the potential to increase seeding of the epidemic in less urban areas, which could undermine the goal of the lockdown in preventing disease spread. Lockdowns play a key role in reducing contacts and controlling outbreaks, but appropriate messaging surrounding their announcement and careful evaluation of changes in mobility are needed to mitigate the possible unintended consequences.
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SciScore for 10.1101/2020.10.22.20217752: (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 and data.
Results from LimitationRecognizer: We detected the following sentences addressing limitations in the study:Limitations: Many simplifying assumptions were made in the simulation model, including homogeneous mixing within locations on the lattice, a gravity model for connectivity, and the inclusion of only one urban center. Additionally, we assumed transmission dynamics were the same between symptomatic and asymptomatic individuals. Individuals in the I compartment are not able to travel immediately upon entering the I compartment, which may …
SciScore for 10.1101/2020.10.22.20217752: (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 and data.
Results from LimitationRecognizer: We detected the following sentences addressing limitations in the study:Limitations: Many simplifying assumptions were made in the simulation model, including homogeneous mixing within locations on the lattice, a gravity model for connectivity, and the inclusion of only one urban center. Additionally, we assumed transmission dynamics were the same between symptomatic and asymptomatic individuals. Individuals in the I compartment are not able to travel immediately upon entering the I compartment, which may underestimate the amount of travel that would occur prior to symptom onset; however, given that those in A are able to travel, this likely will not impact the overall dynamics. We further assumed that increases in movement observed in the data following lockdown announcements coincided with increased contact rates, particularly in light of the anecdotal evidence of “panic buying”. However, in future outbreaks, interventions such as masks and social distancing, which were not consistently implemented in many places when lockdowns were first initiated, may reduce the correlation between movement and contact rates. Finally, the mobility analyses absorb the limitations of the Facebook data, which are limited to Facebook users with location services enabled. Despite these limitations, our results highlight the need for careful implementation of lockdowns to mitigate their potential unintended consequences.
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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