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Limiting mobility during COVID-19, when and to what level? An international comparative study using change point analysis

The year 2020 saw a rapid global spread of the highly contagious novel coronavirus COVID-19. To halt the spread of the disease, decision makers and governments across the world have been forced to limit mobility and human interaction, which led to a complete lockdown and the closure of nonessential...

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Autores principales: Gargoum, Suliman A., Gargoum, Ali S.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Elsevier Ltd. 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7984960/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33777694
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jth.2021.101019
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author Gargoum, Suliman A.
Gargoum, Ali S.
author_facet Gargoum, Suliman A.
Gargoum, Ali S.
author_sort Gargoum, Suliman A.
collection PubMed
description The year 2020 saw a rapid global spread of the highly contagious novel coronavirus COVID-19. To halt the spread of the disease, decision makers and governments across the world have been forced to limit mobility and human interaction, which led to a complete lockdown and the closure of nonessential businesses and public places in many cities and countries. Although effective in curbing the spread of the disease, such measures have had major social and economic impacts, particularly at locations where a complete lockdown was required. In such unprecedented circumstances, decision makers were faced with the dilemma of deciding on how and when to limit mobility to curb the spread of the disease, while being considerate of the significant economic impacts of enforcing such a lockdown. Limited research in this area meant that decision makers were forced to experiment different courses of action without fully understanding the consequences of those actions. To address this critical gap and to provide decision makers with more insights on how to manage mobility during a global pandemic, this paper conducts statistical change point analysis of mobility data from 10 different countries with the aims of establishing links between mobility trends, COVID-19 infections, and COVID-19 mortality rates across different countries where different policies were adopted. Among other findings, the analysis revealed that slow responders experienced significantly higher mortality rates per 100,000 people and were forced to implement stricter lockdown strategies when compared to early responders. The analysis also shows that operating at 40% level of mobility is achievable if appropriate action is taken early enough. The findings of this study are extremely valuable in helping nations better manage a, highly anticipated, second wave of COVID-19 or any other highly contagious global pandemic.
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spelling pubmed-79849602021-03-23 Limiting mobility during COVID-19, when and to what level? An international comparative study using change point analysis Gargoum, Suliman A. Gargoum, Ali S. J Transp Health Article The year 2020 saw a rapid global spread of the highly contagious novel coronavirus COVID-19. To halt the spread of the disease, decision makers and governments across the world have been forced to limit mobility and human interaction, which led to a complete lockdown and the closure of nonessential businesses and public places in many cities and countries. Although effective in curbing the spread of the disease, such measures have had major social and economic impacts, particularly at locations where a complete lockdown was required. In such unprecedented circumstances, decision makers were faced with the dilemma of deciding on how and when to limit mobility to curb the spread of the disease, while being considerate of the significant economic impacts of enforcing such a lockdown. Limited research in this area meant that decision makers were forced to experiment different courses of action without fully understanding the consequences of those actions. To address this critical gap and to provide decision makers with more insights on how to manage mobility during a global pandemic, this paper conducts statistical change point analysis of mobility data from 10 different countries with the aims of establishing links between mobility trends, COVID-19 infections, and COVID-19 mortality rates across different countries where different policies were adopted. Among other findings, the analysis revealed that slow responders experienced significantly higher mortality rates per 100,000 people and were forced to implement stricter lockdown strategies when compared to early responders. The analysis also shows that operating at 40% level of mobility is achievable if appropriate action is taken early enough. The findings of this study are extremely valuable in helping nations better manage a, highly anticipated, second wave of COVID-19 or any other highly contagious global pandemic. Elsevier Ltd. 2021-03 2021-02-02 /pmc/articles/PMC7984960/ /pubmed/33777694 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jth.2021.101019 Text en © 2021 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Since January 2020 Elsevier has created a COVID-19 resource centre with free information in English and Mandarin on the novel coronavirus COVID-19. The COVID-19 resource centre is hosted on Elsevier Connect, the company's public news and information website. Elsevier hereby grants permission to make all its COVID-19-related research that is available on the COVID-19 resource centre - including this research content - immediately available in PubMed Central and other publicly funded repositories, such as the WHO COVID database with rights for unrestricted research re-use and analyses in any form or by any means with acknowledgement of the original source. These permissions are granted for free by Elsevier for as long as the COVID-19 resource centre remains active.
spellingShingle Article
Gargoum, Suliman A.
Gargoum, Ali S.
Limiting mobility during COVID-19, when and to what level? An international comparative study using change point analysis
title Limiting mobility during COVID-19, when and to what level? An international comparative study using change point analysis
title_full Limiting mobility during COVID-19, when and to what level? An international comparative study using change point analysis
title_fullStr Limiting mobility during COVID-19, when and to what level? An international comparative study using change point analysis
title_full_unstemmed Limiting mobility during COVID-19, when and to what level? An international comparative study using change point analysis
title_short Limiting mobility during COVID-19, when and to what level? An international comparative study using change point analysis
title_sort limiting mobility during covid-19, when and to what level? an international comparative study using change point analysis
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7984960/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33777694
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jth.2021.101019
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