Sci Rep . Novel indicator for the spread of new coronavirus disease 2019 and its association with human mobility in Japan

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Sci Rep


. 2023 Jan 3;13(1):115.
doi: 10.1038/s41598-022-27322-4.
Novel indicator for the spread of new coronavirus disease 2019 and its association with human mobility in Japan


Yuta Kawakami ^{1 2} , Shuko Nojiri ^{3 4 5} , Daisuke Nakamoto ⁶ , Yoshiki Irie ^{1 7} , Satoshi Miyazawa ⁸ , Manabu Kuroki ⁹ , Yuji Nishizaki ^{1 10 6 11}



Affiliations

• PMID: 36596837
• DOI: 10.1038/s41598-022-27322-4

Abstract

The Japanese government adopted policies to control human mobility in 2020 to prevent the spread of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2, which causes coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). The present study examined the impact of human mobility on COVID-19 cases at the prefectural level in Japan by devising an indicator to have a relationship between the number of infected people and on human mobility. We calculated origin-destination travel mobility within prefectures in Japan from March 1st to December 31st, 2020, using mobile phone data. A cross-correlation function (CCF) was used to examine the relationship between human mobility and a COVID-19 infection acceleration indicator (IAI), which represents the rate of change in the speed of COVID-19 infection. The CCF of intraprefectural human mobility and the IAI in Tokyo showed a maximum value of 0.440 at lag day 12, and the IAI could be used as an indicator to predict COVID-19 cases. Therefore, the IAI and human mobility during the COVID-19 pandemic were useful for predicting infection status. The number of COVID-19 cases was associated with human mobility at the prefectural level in Japan in 2020. Controlling human mobility could help control infectious diseases in a pandemic, especially prior to starting vaccination.