Mobility restrictions were associated with reductions in COVID-19 incidence early in the pandemic: evidence from a real-time evaluation in 34 countries

  1. Juhwan Oh
  2. Hwa-Young Lee
  3. Quynh Long Khuong
  4. Jeffrey F. Markuns
  5. Chris Bullen
  6. Osvaldo Enrique Artaza Barrios
  7. Seung-sik Hwang
  8. Young Sahng Suh
  9. Judith McCool
  10. S. Patrick Kachur
  11. Chang-Chuan Chan
  12. Soonman Kwon
  13. Naoki Kondo
  14. Van Minh Hoang
  15. J. Robin Moon
  16. Mikael Rostila
  17. Ole F. Norheim
  18. Myoungsoon You
  19. Mellissa Withers
  20. Mu Li
  21. Eun-Jeung Lee
  22. Caroline Benski
  23. Sookyung Park
  24. Eun-Woo Nam
  25. Katie Gottschalk
  26. Matthew M. Kavanagh
  27. Thi Giang Huong Tran
  28. Jong-Koo Lee
  29. S. V. Subramanian
  30. Martin McKee
  31. Lawrence O. Gostin

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Abstract

Most countries have implemented restrictions on mobility to prevent the spread of Coronavirus disease-19 (COVID-19), entailing considerable societal costs but, at least initially, based on limited evidence of effectiveness. We asked whether mobility restrictions were associated with changes in the occurrence of COVID-19 in 34 OECD countries plus Singapore and Taiwan. Our data sources were the Google Global Mobility Data Source, which reports different types of mobility, and COVID-19 cases retrieved from the dataset curated by Our World in Data. Beginning at each country’s 100th case, and incorporating a 14-day lag to account for the delay between exposure and illness, we examined the association between changes in mobility (with January 3 to February 6, 2020 as baseline) and the ratio of the number of newly confirmed cases on a given day to the total number of cases over the past 14 days from the index day (the potentially infective ‘pool’ in that population), per million population, using LOESS regression and logit regression. In two-thirds of examined countries, reductions of up to 40% in commuting mobility (to workplaces, transit stations, retailers, and recreation) were associated with decreased cases, especially early in the pandemic. Once both mobility and incidence had been brought down, further restrictions provided little additional benefit. These findings point to the importance of acting early and decisively in a pandemic.

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  1. Version published to 10.1038/s41598-021-92766-z
  2. ScreenIT

    SciScore for 10.1101/2020.10.29.20222414: (What is this?)

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

    Table 1: Rigor

    Institutional Review Board Statementnot detected.
    Randomizationnot detected.
    Blindingnot detected.
    Power Analysisnot detected.
    Sex as a biological variablenot detected.

    Table 2: Resources

    No key resources detected.

    Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).

    Results from LimitationRecognizer: We detected the following sentences addressing limitations in the study:
    This study has several limitations. First, Google data are only generated by Android users who have location services switched on. These individuals may be an atypical minority of the population in some countries, or there may be changes in the type of users over time, such as tourists (as in Greece), although in most cases numbers will be small. Second, reported incidence rates are influenced by availability of testing and quality of reporting. Third, the use of an ecological design introduces scope for confounding and imprecision: our data do not allow us to isolate the impact of mobility restrictions from the many other variables that intervene in a pandemic response, such as the degree of inter-household mixing, the ability to detect and rapidly control an outbreak, and behavioral characteristics, such as use of face coverings and adherence to physical distancing guidelines, themselves influenced by clarity of messaging and trust in official advice. A related limitation is that, in federal countries such as the United States, there may be substantial sub-national differences in implementation of these characteristics and in other policies. However, given the complex nature of these relationships, influenced by starting conditions, feedback loops, and non-linear relationships, the analytic challenges of disentangling these factors are formidable even if data were available. There are a variety of possible explanations for our findings. Mandatory restrictions on mobility ma...

    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.

    About SciScore

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  3. Version published to 10.1101/2020.10.29.20222414v1 on medRxiv