Department of Biology, Georgetown University, Washington, DC, United States.
Unacast, Oslo, Norway.
J Med Internet Res. 2021 Jan 22;23(1):e24591. doi: 10.2196/24591.
Eliminating disparities in the burden of COVID-19 requires equitable access to control measures across socio-economic groups. Limited research on socio-economic differences in mobility hampers our ability to understand whether inequalities in social distancing are occurring during the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic.
We aimed to assess how mobility patterns have varied across the United States during the COVID-19 pandemic and to identify associations with socioeconomic factors of populations.
We used anonymized mobility data from tens of millions of devices to measure the speed and depth of social distancing at the county level in the United States between February and May 2020, the period during which social distancing was widespread in this country. Using linear mixed models, we assessed the associations between social distancing and socioeconomic variables, including the proportion of people in the population below the poverty level, the proportion of Black people, the proportion of essential workers, and the population density.
We found that the speed, depth, and duration of social distancing in the United States are heterogeneous. We particularly show that social distancing is slower and less intense in counties with higher proportions of people below the poverty level and essential workers; in contrast, we show that social distancing is intensely adopted in counties with higher population densities and larger Black populations.
Socioeconomic inequalities appear to be associated with the levels of adoption of social distancing, potentially resulting in wide-ranging differences in the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in communities across the United States. These inequalities are likely to amplify existing health disparities and must be addressed to ensure the success of ongoing pandemic mitigation efforts.
消除 COVID-19 负担方面的差异需要在社会经济群体中公平获得控制措施。关于流动性方面的社会经济差异的研究有限，这限制了我们理解在 SARS-CoV-2 大流行期间是否存在社会隔离不平等的能力。
我们旨在评估在 COVID-19 大流行期间美国各地的流动性模式如何变化，并确定与人口的社会经济因素的关联。
我们使用来自数千万台设备的匿名移动数据，以衡量美国在 2020 年 2 月至 5 月期间的 COVID-19 大流行期间县一级的社交距离的速度和深度，这是该国广泛实施社交距离的时期。使用线性混合模型，我们评估了社会隔离与社会经济变量（包括人口中处于贫困线以下的人数比例、黑人人数比例、基本工人人数比例和人口密度）之间的关联。
我们发现，美国的社交距离速度、深度和持续时间具有异质性。我们特别表明，在贫困人口比例和基本工人比例较高的县，社交距离较慢且强度较低；相比之下，我们表明，在人口密度较高和黑人人口较多的县，社交距离被强烈采用。
社会经济不平等似乎与社会隔离的采用水平相关联，这可能导致 COVID-19 大流行在美国各地社区的影响产生广泛的差异。这些不平等可能会放大现有的健康差异，必须加以解决，以确保正在进行的大流行缓解努力取得成功。
