A longitudinal study of the impact of human mobility on the incidence of COVID-19 in India

  1. Sarbeswar Praharaj
  2. Hoon Han

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Abstract

Human mobility plays a crucial role in determining how fast and where infectious diseases can spread. This study aims to investigate visit to which category of places among grocery, retail, parks, workplaces, residential, and transit stations is more associated with the incidence of COVID-19 in India. A longitudinal analysis of generalized estimating equation (GEE) with a Poisson log-linear model is employed to analyze the daily mobility rate and reported new cases of COVID-19 between March 14 and September 11, 2020. This study finds that mobility to places of grocery (food and vegetable markets, drug stores etc.) and retail (restaurants, cafes, shopping centres etc.) is significantly associated (at p<0.01) with the incidence of COVID-19. In contrast, visits to parks, transit stations and mobility within residential neighbourhoods are not statistically significant (p>0.05) in changing COVID-19 cases over time. These findings highlight that instead of blanket lockdown restrictions, authorities should adopt a place-based approach focusing on vulnerable hotspot locations to contain the COVID-19 and any future infectious disease.

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  1. ScreenIT

    SciScore for 10.1101/2020.12.21.20248523: (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

    Experimental Models: Organisms/Strains
    SentencesResources
    We denote the expected cases, log(μ) and six mobility rates xn = x1 + x2 + x3 + x4 + x5 + x6.
    x1 + x2 + x3 + x4 + x5 + x6
    suggested: None
    Software and Algorithms
    SentencesResources
    GCMR (Google, 2020)provides aggregated and de-identifiable information of Google Map users on their visits to different categories of places based on their location history.
    Google
    suggested: (Google, RRID:SCR_017097)
    Google Map
    suggested: None

    Results from OddPub: Thank you for sharing your data.

    Results from LimitationRecognizer: We detected the following sentences addressing limitations in the study:
    However, there may be some possible limitations/bias in the data used for analysis, and the results of this study should be interpreted in light of those limitations. The dependent variable consists of daily COVID-19 cases by regions. The availability of testing centres and the number of tests performed across states in India varies significantly (Rafiq et al., 2020; Sarkar et al., 2020). India’s testing rate is slightly above 70,000 per million population as of September 11 (the last date for which data is included in this analysis), which is much lower than other COVID-19 worst-hit countries like USA or Brazil, which have conducted over 400,000 tests per million people (WHO, 2020c). Hence, the actual cases in India, overall and across regions, might be much higher than reported COVID-19 positive cases. Also, depending on the late development or non-availability of testing equipment at the early stages of the pandemic, the accuracy of daily new cases might have been affected. With the mobility indicators, a major limitation was that it includes data for select people who use Google products on a smartphone (Aktay et al., 2020). Therefore, the data might not representatively capture all groups, such as older adults and the low-income population who might not be using smartphones while navigating through different places. The other limitation is to the aggregated number of travels which does not reflect the frequency of travels per person, especially those who travel multiple ...

    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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  2. Version published to 10.1101/2020.12.21.20248523v1 on medRxiv