The Effectiveness of Mobility Restrictions on Controlling the Spread of COVID-19 in a Resistant Population

Dina Albassam, Mariam Nouh () and Anette Hosoi
Additional contact information
Dina Albassam: King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology (KACST), Riyadh 11442, Saudi Arabia
Mariam Nouh: King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology (KACST), Riyadh 11442, Saudi Arabia
Anette Hosoi: Institute for Data, System and Society (IDSS), Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, MA 02139, USA

IJERPH, 2023, vol. 20, issue 7, 1-14

Abstract: Human mobility plays an important role in the spread of COVID-19. Given this knowledge, countries implemented mobility-restricting policies. Concomitantly, as the pandemic progressed, population resistance to the virus increased via natural immunity and vaccination. We address the question: “What is the impact of mobility-restricting measures on a resistant population?” We consider two factors: different types of points of interest (POIs)—including transit stations, groceries and pharmacies, retail and recreation, workplaces, and parks—and the emergence of the Delta variant. We studied a group of 14 countries and estimated COVID-19 transmission based on the type of POI, the fraction of population resistance, and the presence of the Delta variant using a Pearson correlation between mobility and the growth rate of cases. We find that retail and recreation venues, transit stations, and workplaces are the POIs that benefit the most from mobility restrictions, mainly if the fraction of the population with resistance is below 25–30%. Groceries and pharmacies may benefit from mobility restrictions when the population resistance fraction is low, whereas in parks, there is little advantage to mobility-restricting measures. These results are consistent for both the original strain and the Delta variant; Omicron data were not included in this work.

Keywords: COVID-19; Delta-variant; fraction of resistance; human mobility; pandemic; Pearson correlation method (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/20/7/5343/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/20/7/5343/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:20:y:2023:i:7:p:5343-:d:1112385

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().