Mobility network models of COVID-19 explain inequities and inform reopening

Serina Chang, Emma Pierson, Pang Wei Koh, Jaline Gerardin, Beth Redbird, David Grusky, Jure Leskovec*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

979 Scopus citations

Abstract

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic markedly changed human mobility patterns, necessitating epidemiological models that can capture the effects of these changes in mobility on the spread of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2)1. Here we introduce a metapopulation susceptible–exposed–infectious–removed (SEIR) model that integrates fine-grained, dynamic mobility networks to simulate the spread of SARS-CoV-2 in ten of the largest US metropolitan areas. Our mobility networks are derived from mobile phone data and map the hourly movements of 98 million people from neighbourhoods (or census block groups) to points of interest such as restaurants and religious establishments, connecting 56,945 census block groups to 552,758 points of interest with 5.4 billion hourly edges. We show that by integrating these networks, a relatively simple SEIR model can accurately fit the real case trajectory, despite substantial changes in the behaviour of the population over time. Our model predicts that a small minority of ‘superspreader’ points of interest account for a large majority of the infections, and that restricting the maximum occupancy at each point of interest is more effective than uniformly reducing mobility. Our model also correctly predicts higher infection rates among disadvantaged racial and socioeconomic groups2–8 solely as the result of differences in mobility: we find that disadvantaged groups have not been able to reduce their mobility as sharply, and that the points of interest that they visit are more crowded and are therefore associated with higher risk. By capturing who is infected at which locations, our model supports detailed analyses that can inform more-effective and equitable policy responses to COVID-19.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)82-87
Number of pages6
JournalNature
Volume589
Issue number7840
DOIs
StatePublished - Jan 7 2021

Funding

Acknowledgements We thank Y.-Y. Ahn, R. Appel, C. Chen, J. Feng, N. Fishman, S. Fullerton, T. Hashimoto, M. Kraemer, P. Liang, M. Lipsitch, K. Loh, D. Ouyang, R. Rosenfeld, S. Sagawa, J. Steinhardt, R. Tibshirani, J. Ugander, D. Vrabac, seminar participants and Stanford’s Computer Science and Civil Society for support and comments; and N. Singh, R. F. Squire, J. Williams-Holt, J. Wolf, R. Yang and others at SafeGraph for mobile phone mobility data and feedback. This research was supported by US National Science Foundation under OAC-1835598 (CINES), OAC-1934578 (HDR), CCF-1918940 (Expeditions), IIS-2030477 (RAPID), Stanford Data Science Initiative, Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute and Chan Zuckerberg Biohub. S.C. was supported by an NSF Fellowship. E.P. was supported by a Hertz Fellowship. P.W.K. was supported by the Facebook Fellowship Program. J.L. is a Chan Zuckerberg Biohub investigator.

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • General

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