Pandemic catch-22: The role of mobility restrictions and institutional inequalities in halting the spread of COVID-19.
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ABSTRACT:
SUBMITTER: Fakir AMS
PROVIDER: S-EPMC8238194 | biostudies-literature |
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature
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Project description:After the emergence of the H1N1 influenza in 2009, some countries responded with travel-related controls during the early stage of the outbreak in an attempt to contain or slow down its international spread. These controls along with self-imposed travel limitations contributed to a decline of about 40% in international air traffic to/from Mexico following the international alert. However, no containment was achieved by such restrictions and the virus was able to reach pandemic proportions in a short time. When gauging the value and efficacy of mobility and travel restrictions it is crucial to rely on epidemic models that integrate the wide range of features characterizing human mobility and the many options available to public health organizations for responding to a pandemic. Here we present a comprehensive computational and theoretical study of the role of travel restrictions in halting and delaying pandemics by using a model that explicitly integrates air travel and short-range mobility data with high-resolution demographic data across the world and that is validated by the accumulation of data from the 2009 H1N1 pandemic. We explore alternative scenarios for the 2009 H1N1 pandemic by assessing the potential impact of mobility restrictions that vary with respect to their magnitude and their position in the pandemic timeline. We provide a quantitative discussion of the delay obtained by different mobility restrictions and the likelihood of containing outbreaks of infectious diseases at their source, confirming the limited value and feasibility of international travel restrictions. These results are rationalized in the theoretical framework characterizing the invasion dynamics of the epidemics at the metapopulation level.
| S-EPMC3031602 | biostudies-literature
Project description:BackgroundThe COVID-19 pandemic has induced unprecedented reductions in human mobility and social contacts throughout the world. Because dengue virus (DENV) transmission is strongly driven by human mobility, behavioral changes associated with the pandemic have been hypothesized to impact dengue incidence. By discouraging human contact, COVID-19 control measures have also disrupted dengue vector control interventions, the most effective of which require entry into homes. We sought to investigate how and why dengue incidence could differ under a lockdown scenario with a proportion of the population sheltered at home.Methodology & principal findingsWe used an agent-based model with a realistic treatment of human mobility and vector control. We found that a lockdown in which 70% of the population sheltered at home and which occurred in a season when a new serotype invaded could lead to a small average increase in cumulative DENV infections of up to 10%, depending on the time of year lockdown occurred. Lockdown had a more pronounced effect on the spatial distribution of DENV infections, with higher incidence under lockdown in regions with higher mosquito abundance. Transmission was also more focused in homes following lockdown. The proportion of people infected in their own home rose from 54% under normal conditions to 66% under lockdown, and the household secondary attack rate rose from 0.109 to 0.128, a 17% increase. When we considered that lockdown measures could disrupt regular, city-wide vector control campaigns, the increase in incidence was more pronounced than with lockdown alone, especially if lockdown occurred at the optimal time for vector control.Conclusions & significanceOur results indicate that an unintended outcome of lockdown measures may be to adversely alter the epidemiology of dengue. This observation has important implications for an improved understanding of dengue epidemiology and effective application of dengue vector control. When coordinating public health responses during a syndemic, it is important to monitor multiple infections and understand that an intervention against one disease may exacerbate another.
| S-EPMC8375978 | biostudies-literature
Project description:We quantify the causal impact of human mobility restrictions, particularly the lockdown of Wuhan on January 23, 2020, on the containment and delay of the spread of the Novel Coronavirus (2019-nCoV). We employ difference-in-differences (DID) estimations to disentangle the lockdown effect on human mobility reductions from other confounding effects including panic effect, virus effect, and the Spring Festival effect. The lockdown of Wuhan reduced inflows to Wuhan by 76.98%, outflows from Wuhan by 56.31%, and within-Wuhan movements by 55.91%. We also estimate the dynamic effects of up to 22 lagged population inflows from Wuhan and other Hubei cities - the epicenter of the 2019-nCoV outbreak - on the destination cities' new infection cases. We also provide evidence that the enhanced social distancing policies in the 98 Chinese cities outside Hubei province were effective in reducing the impact of the population inflows from the epicenter cities in Hubei province on the spread of 2019-nCoV in the destination cities. We find that in the counterfactual world in which Wuhan were not locked down on January 23, 2020, the COVID-19 cases would be 105.27% higher in the 347 Chinese cities outside Hubei province. Our findings are relevant in the global efforts in pandemic containment.
| S-EPMC7833277 | biostudies-literature
Project description:This study examines the possibility of correlation between the data on human mobility restrictions and the COVID-19 infection rates in two European countries: Poland and Portugal. The aim of this study is to verify the correlation and causation between mobility changes and the infection spread as well as to investigate the impact of the introduced restrictions on changes in human mobility. The data were obtained from Google Community Mobility Reports, Apple Mobility Trends Reports, and The Humanitarian Data Exchange along with other reports published online. All the data were organized in one dataset, and three groups of variables were distinguished: restrictions, mobility, and intensity of the disease. The causal-comparative research design method is used for this study. The results show that in both countries the state restrictions reduced human mobility, with the strongest impact in places related to retail and recreation, grocery, pharmacy, and transit stations. At the same time, the data show that the increase in restrictions had strong positive correlation with stays in residential places both in Poland and Portugal.
| S-EPMC9655221 | biostudies-literature
Project description:During the COVID-19 pandemic in Japan, various measures have been implemented to prevent the spread of infection, including restrictions on human mobility. A dynamic fluctuation in the number of suicides has been observed during this period. The question is whether the increase/decrease in suicides during the pandemic is related to changes in human mobility. To answer the same, we estimated incidence rate ratios (IRR) of suicide for changes in human mobility using the relative number of suicides by month from March 2020 to September 2021, based on the same months in 2019 as reference. The IRR of suicide during the pandemic were significantly lower in the months when mobility decreased-in both the previous and current month-than in the months when mobility was stable; the IRR of suicide were statistically higher in the months with increased mobility compared with the stable months. The burden from a decrease in one's mobility, which might lead to an increase in suicide, may not occur immediately, as seen in the delayed effects of unemployment. It may be important to investigate people's mental health and stress levels after pandemic restrictions were relaxed. The findings may help practitioners and families consider the timing of intervention.
| S-EPMC9548340 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Recent literature on the mental health consequences of social distancing measures has found a substantial increase in self-reported sleep disorders, anxiety and depressive symptoms during lockdown periods. We investigate this issue with data on monthly purchases of psychotropic drugs from the universe of Italian pharmacies during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic and find that purchases of mental health-related drugs have increased with respect to 2019. However, the excess volumes do not match the massive increase in anxiety and depressive disorders found in survey-based studies. We also study the interplay between mobility, measured with anonymized mobile phone data, and mental health and report no significant effect of mobility restrictions on antidepressants and anxiolytics purchases during 2020. We provide three potential mechanisms that could drive the discrepancy between self-reported mental health surveys and psychotropic drugs prescription registries: (1) stockpiling practices in the early phases of the pandemic; (2) the adoption of compensatory behavior and (3) unexpressed and unmet needs due to both demand- and supply-side shortages in healthcare services.
| S-EPMC9651906 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) develops within 3-14 days when CoV2 invades epithelial, myeloid cells in the nasopharynx and pneumocytes in the respiratory tract through angiotensin converting enzyme (ACE2). Infection swiftly disseminates to gastrointestinal, cardiovascular, renal organs as well as immune system to deregulate their normal functioning through unique and distinct mechanisms. The health system and economy has been intensely thwarted by the rapid spread and exorbitant mortality caused by COVID-19 disease across the globe. The acute progression of the disease and high infection rate pose an enormous challenge for its therapeutic management and critical care. The viral structure, genome and proteome have been deciphered which yielded cues for targeting already available therapeutic entities. More than 200 compounds have been screened and till date approximately 69 therapeutic agents are undergoing clinical trials across the world. Among these, remedesivir (RMD), chloroquine (CQ), hydroxychloroquine (HCQ), noscapine (NOS) and heparin have demonstrated fairly promising results in preclinical and clinical studies. Recently, RMD has been approved by USFDA for the management of COVID 19. However, intense research is going on to screen and ace the 'magic bullets' for the management of SARS-CoV2 infection worldwide. The current review illustrates the plausible therapeutic targets in SARS-CoV2 important for inhibition of virus cycle. In addition, the role of RMD, CQ, HCQ, NOS and heparin in combating infection has been addressed. The importance of vitamin C and D supplements as adjunct therapies in the prevention of SARS-CoV2 virus infection have also been summarized.
| S-EPMC7572089 | biostudies-literature
Project description:BackgroundRestricting human mobility is an effective strategy used to control disease spread. However, whether mobility restriction is a proportional response to control the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic is unclear. We aimed to develop a model that can quantify the potential effects of various intracity mobility restrictions on the spread of COVID-19.MethodsIn this modelling study, we used anonymous and aggregated mobile phone sightings data to build a susceptible-exposed-infectious-recovered transmission model for COVID-19 based on the city of Shenzhen, China. We simulated how disease spread changed when we varied the type and magnitude of mobility restrictions in different transmission scenarios, with variables such as the basic reproductive number (R 0), length of infectious period, and the number of initial cases.Findings331 COVID-19 cases distributed across the ten regions of Shenzhen were reported on Feb 7, 2020. In our basic scenario (R 0 of 2·68), mobility reduction of 20-60% within the city had a notable effect on controlling COVID-19 spread: a flattening of the peak number of cases by 33% (95% UI 21-42) and delay to the peak number by 2 weeks with a 20% restriction, 66% (48-75) reduction and 4 week delay with a 40% restriction, and 91% (79-95) reduction and 14 week delay with a 60% restriction. The effects of mobility restriction were increased when combined with reductions of 25% or 50% in transmissibility of the virus. In specific analyses of mobility restrictions for individuals with symptomatic infections and for high-risk regions, these measures also had substantial effects on reducing the spread of COVID-19. For example, the peak of the epidemic was delayed by 2 weeks if the proportion of individuals with symptomatic infections who could move freely was maintained at 20%, and by 4 weeks if two high-risk regions were locked down. The simulation results were also affected by various transmission parameters.InterpretationOur model shows the effects of various types and magnitudes of mobility restrictions on controlling COVID-19 outbreaks at the city level in Shenzhen, China. The model could help policy makers to establish the optimal combinations of mobility restrictions during the COVID-19 pandemic, especially to assess the potential positive effects of mobility restriction on public health in view of the potential negative economic and societal effects.FundingGuangdong Medical Science Fund, and National Natural Science Foundation of China.
| S-EPMC7384783 | biostudies-literature
Project description:To reduce the spread and the effect of the COVID-19 global pandemic, non-pharmaceutical interventions have been adopted on multiple occasions by governments. In particular lockdown policies, i.e., generalized mobility restrictions, have been employed to fight the first wave of the pandemic. We analyze data reflecting mobility levels over time in Italy before, during and after the national lockdown, in order to assess some direct and indirect effects. By applying methodologies based on percolation and network science approaches, we find that the typical network characteristics, while very revealing, do not tell the whole story. In particular, the Italian mobility network during lockdown has been damaged much more than node- and edge-level metrics indicate. Additionally, many of the main Provinces of Italy are affected by the lockdown in a surprisingly similar fashion, despite their geographical and economic dissimilarity. Based on our findings we offer an approach to estimate unavailable high-resolution economic dimensions, such as real time Province-level GDP, based on easily measurable mobility information.
| S-EPMC8575918 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Abstract We assess the effect of the COVID‐19 pandemic and particularly the sector‐specific mobility restrictions on the Colombian labour market. We exploit the sectoral and temporal variation of the restriction policies to identify their effect. Mobility restrictions significantly reduced employment, accounting for approximately a quarter of the total job loss between February and April of 2020. The remaining three quarters of the job losses could be attributed to the disease's regional patterns and other epidemiological and economic factors affecting the whole country. Therefore, we should expect important employment losses even in the absence of such restrictions. We also assess the effect of restrictions on the intensive margin, finding negative, although smaller effects on the number of hours worked and wages. Most of the employment effect is driven by salaried workers, while self‐employment was more responsive to the disease spread. Finally, we find that women are disproportionally affected: mobility restrictions account for a third of the recent increase of the gender gap in salaried employment.
| S-EPMC9111872 | biostudies-literature