Center for Communicable Disease Dynamics, Department of Epidemiology, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, MA, USA.
Department of Microbiology, University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, Illinois, USA.
Sci Rep. 2021 Mar 26;11(1):6995. doi: 10.1038/s41598-021-86297-w.
In response to the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, unprecedented travel restrictions and stay-at-home orders were enacted around the world. Ultimately, the public's response to announcements of lockdowns-defined as restrictions on both local movement or long distance travel-will determine how effective these kinds of interventions are. Here, we evaluate the effects of lockdowns on human mobility and simulate how these changes may affect epidemic spread by analyzing aggregated mobility data from mobile phones. We show that in 2020 following lockdown announcements but prior to their implementation, both local and long distance movement increased in multiple locations, and urban-to-rural migration was observed around the world. To examine how these behavioral responses to lockdown policies may contribute to epidemic spread, we developed a simple agent-based spatial model. Our model shows that this increased movement has the potential to increase seeding of the epidemic in less urban areas, which could undermine the goal of the lockdown in preventing disease spread. Lockdowns play a key role in reducing contacts and controlling outbreaks, but appropriate messaging surrounding their announcement and careful evaluation of changes in mobility are needed to mitigate the possible unintended consequences.
针对 SARS-CoV-2 大流行，全球实施了前所未有的旅行限制和居家令。最终，公众对封锁措施的反应（定义为对本地移动或长途旅行的限制）将决定这些干预措施的有效性。在这里，我们评估了封锁对人类流动性的影响，并通过分析来自手机的聚合移动数据来模拟这些变化如何影响疫情传播。我们表明，在 2020 年封锁公告发布后但在实施之前，多个地点的本地和长途移动都有所增加，并且观察到世界各地的城市到农村的人口迁移。为了研究对封锁政策的这些行为反应如何可能导致疫情传播，我们开发了一个简单的基于主体的空间模型。我们的模型表明，这种增加的流动有可能增加疫情在人口较少的城市地区的传播，从而破坏封锁防止疾病传播的目标。封锁在减少接触和控制疫情爆发方面发挥着关键作用，但需要在宣布封锁时进行适当的宣传，并仔细评估流动性的变化，以减轻可能出现的意外后果。
