Mobility Reduction and Covid-19 Transmission Rates

  1. Nittai K. Bergman
  2. Ram Fishman

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Abstract

Assessing the contribution of mobility restrictions to the control of Covid-19 diffusion is an urgent challenge of global import. We analyze the relation between transmission rates (estimated effective reproduction numbers) and societal mobility levels using fine-grained daily mobility data from Google and Apple in an international panel of 87 countries and a panel of all states in the United States. Reduced form regression estimates that flexibly control for time trends suggest that a 10 percentage point reduction in mobility is associated with a 0.04-0.09 reduction in the value of the effective reproduction number, R ( t ), depending on geographical region and modelling choice. According to these estimates, to avoid the critical value of R = 1, easing mobility restrictions may have to be limited to below pre-pandemic levels or delayed until other non-mobility related preventative measures reduce R to a level of 0.55–0.7 in Europe, a level of 0.64–0.76 in Asia, and a level of 0.8 in the United States. Given gaps in data availability and inference challenges, these estimates should be interpreted with caution.

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    SciScore for 10.1101/2020.05.06.20093039: (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

    Software and Algorithms
    SentencesResources
    The U.S. sample includes all states over the period March 13th - May 2nd when using Google data, and March 13th - May8th when using Apple data.
    Google
    suggested: (Google, RRID:SCR_017097)

    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: An explicit section about the limitations of the techniques employed in this study was not found. We encourage authors to address study limitations.

    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 10.1101/2020.05.06.20093039v3 on medRxiv
  3. Version published to 10.1101/2020.05.06.20093039v2 on medRxiv
  4. Version published to 10.1101/2020.05.06.20093039v1 on medRxiv