Department of Geography & Environment, Western University, London, Ontario, Canada.
Department of Geography & Environment, Western University, London, Ontario, Canada.
Health Place. 2023 Jan;79:102668. doi: 10.1016/j.healthplace.2021.102668. Epub 2021 Sep 20.
Regionally targeted interventions are being used by governments to slow the spread of COVID-19. In areas where free movement is not being actively restricted, there is uncertainty about how effective such regionally targeted interventions are due to the free movement of people between regions. We use mobile-phone network mobility data to test two hypotheses: 1) do regions targeted by exhibit increased outflows into other regions and 2) do regions targeted by interventions increase outflows specifically into areas with lesser restrictions. Our analysis focuses on two well-defined regionally targeted interventions in Ontario, Canada the first intervention as the first wave subsided (July 17, 2020) and the second intervention as we entered into new restrictions during the onset of the second wave (November 23, 2020). We use a difference-in-difference model to investigate hypothesis 1 and an interrupted time series model to investigate hypothesis 2, controlling for spatial effects (using a spatial-error model) in both cases. Our findings suggest that there that the regionally targeted interventions had a neutral effect (or no effect) on inter-regional mobility, with no significant differences associated with the interventions. We also found that overall inter-regional mobility was associated with socio-economic factors and the distance to the boundary of the intervention region. These findings are important as they should guide how governments design regionally targeted interventions (from a geographical perspective) considering observed patterns of mobility.
政府正在采用区域性靶向干预措施来减缓 COVID-19 的传播。在没有积极限制自由流动的地区，由于人员在地区之间的自由流动，对于这种区域性靶向干预措施的效果存在不确定性。我们使用移动电话网络移动数据来检验两个假设：1）是否受到目标区域影响的地区会增加向其他地区的外流；2）是否受到干预措施影响的地区会增加专门流向限制较少的地区的外流。我们的分析集中在加拿大安大略省的两项明确的区域性靶向干预措施上：第一次干预是在第一波疫情消退时（2020 年 7 月 17 日），第二次干预是在第二波疫情开始时我们进入新的限制措施时（2020 年 11 月 23 日）。我们使用差异中的差异模型来检验假设 1，并使用中断时间序列模型来检验假设 2，在两种情况下都控制空间效应（使用空间误差模型）。我们的研究结果表明，这些区域性靶向干预措施对区域间流动没有产生中性（或无）影响，与干预措施无关。我们还发现，总体区域间流动与社会经济因素和与干预区域边界的距离有关。这些发现很重要，因为它们应该指导政府如何（从地理角度）设计区域性靶向干预措施，考虑到观察到的流动模式。
