The Effectiveness of Mobility Restrictions on Controlling the Spread of COVID-19 in a Resistant Population
Name
ijerph-20-05343.pdf
Size
1.6 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
9b526c8218228b132963269f93a47e46
Author(s)
Albassam, Dina
Nouh, Mariam
Hosoi, Anette
Date Issued
March 31, 2023
Publisher
Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute
Citation
International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health 20 (7): 5343 (2023)
Version
Final published version
Abstract
Human mobility plays an important role in the spread of COVID-19. Given this knowledge, countries implemented mobility-restricting policies. Concomitantly, as the pandemic progressed, population resistance to the virus increased via natural immunity and vaccination. We address the question: “What is the impact of mobility-restricting measures on a resistant population?” We consider two factors: different types of points of interest (POIs)—including transit stations, groceries and pharmacies, retail and recreation, workplaces, and parks—and the emergence of the Delta variant. We studied a group of 14 countries and estimated COVID-19 transmission based on the type of POI, the fraction of population resistance, and the presence of the Delta variant using a Pearson correlation between mobility and the growth rate of cases. We find that retail and recreation venues, transit stations, and workplaces are the POIs that benefit the most from mobility restrictions, mainly if the fraction of the population with resistance is below 25–30%. Groceries and pharmacies may benefit from mobility restrictions when the population resistance fraction is low, whereas in parks, there is little advantage to mobility-restricting measures. These results are consistent for both the original strain and the Delta variant; Omicron data were not included in this work.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Institute for Data, Systems, and Society
Terms of Use
Creative Commons Attribution
Persistent DSpace Link
DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph20075343
