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Human mobility trends during the early stage of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States
- Source :
- PLoS ONE, Vol 15, Iss 11, p e0241468 (2020), PLoS ONE
- Publication Year :
- 2020
- Publisher :
- Public Library of Science (PLoS), 2020.
-
Abstract
- In March of this year, COVID-19 was declared a pandemic, and it continues to threaten public health. This global health crisis imposes limitations on daily movements, which have deteriorated every sector in our society. Understanding public reactions to the virus and the non-pharmaceutical interventions should be of great help to fight COVID-19 in a strategic way. We aim to provide tangible evidence of the human mobility trends by comparing the day-by-day variations across the U.S. from January 2020 to early April 2020. Large-scale public mobility at an aggregated level is observed by leveraging mobile device location data and the measures related to social distancing. Our study captures spatial and temporal heterogeneity as well as the sociodemographic variations and teleworking trends regarding the pandemic propagation and the non-pharmaceutical mobility interventions. All metrics adapted capture decreased public movements after the national emergency declaration. The population staying home has increased in all states before the stay-at-home mandates implemented and becomes more stable after the order with a smaller range of fluctuation. The public had been taking active responses, voluntarily staying home more, to the in-state confirmed cases while the stay-at-home orders stabilize the variations. As the estimated teleworking rates also continue to incline throughout the study period, the teleworking trend can be another driving factor for the growing stay-at-home population. We confirm that there exists overall mobility heterogeneity between the income or population density groups. The study suggests that public mobility trends are in line with the government message urging to stay home. We anticipate our data-driven analysis offers integrated perspectives and serves as evidence to raise public awareness and, consequently, reinforce the importance of social distancing while assisting policymakers.
- Subjects :
- Viral Diseases
Epidemiology
Economics
Psychological intervention
Social Sciences
Social Distancing
Systems Science
Medical Conditions
0302 clinical medicine
Order (exchange)
Pandemic
Medicine and Health Sciences
Global health
Public and Occupational Health
030212 general & internal medicine
education.field_of_study
Multidisciplinary
Geography
Social distance
Infectious Diseases
Physical Sciences
Medicine
Coronavirus Infections
Research Article
Employment
Computer and Information Sciences
medicine.medical_specialty
Infectious Disease Control
Movement
Science
Pneumonia, Viral
Population
Human Geography
Betacoronavirus
03 medical and health sciences
Spatio-Temporal Analysis
Population Metrics
Political science
Development economics
medicine
Humans
education
Pandemics
Population Density
Electronic Data Processing
Government
Population Biology
SARS-CoV-2
Public health
COVID-19
Biology and Life Sciences
Covid 19
United States
Cell Phone Use
Labor Economics
Earth Sciences
Human Mobility
Mathematics
030217 neurology & neurosurgery
Dwell Time
Subjects
Details
- Language :
- English
- ISSN :
- 19326203
- Volume :
- 15
- Issue :
- 11
- Database :
- OpenAIRE
- Journal :
- PLoS ONE
- Accession number :
- edsair.doi.dedup.....c955dba894ff9a94f3238aaca1f2169d