COVID-19 outbreak response, a dataset to assess mobility changes in Italy following national lockdown

Emanuele Pepe,Brennan Lake,Filippo Privitera,Ciro Cattuto,Michele Tizzoni,Laetitia Gauvin,Paolo Bajardi

doi:10.1038/s41597-020-00575-2

Emanuele Pepe, Brennan Lake + Show 5 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1038/s41597-020-00575-2

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Abstract

Italy has been severely affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, reporting the highest death toll in Europe as of April 2020. Following the identification of the first infections, on February 21, 2020, national authorities have put in place an increasing number of restrictions aimed at containing the outbreak and delaying the epidemic peak. On March 12, the government imposed a national lockdown. To aid the evaluation of the impact of interventions, we present daily time-series of three different aggregated mobility metrics: the origin-destination movements between Italian provinces, the radius of gyration, and the average degree of a spatial proximity network. All metrics were computed by processing a large-scale dataset of anonymously shared positions of about 170,000 de-identified smartphone users before and during the outbreak, at the sub-national scale. This dataset can help to monitor the impact of the lockdown on the epidemic trajectory and inform future public health decision making.

Highlights

On January 30, 2020, the COVID-19 outbreak was declared a Public Health Emergency of International Concern by the WHO and since it has infected more than 3 million individuals spreading in almost every country in the world, reaching pandemic proportions[1]
As of mid-April, Italy is one of the countries most severely affected by the pandemic, with a death toll that surpassed 20,000
Following the detection of the first cluster of COVID-19 cases in Lombardy, on 21 February 2020, the government adopted an increasing number of orders, ranging from school and university closures, limits placed on large social gatherings, closure of bar and restaurants, and a national stay-at-home order

Summary

Introduction

Background & SummaryOn January 30, 2020, the COVID-19 outbreak was declared a Public Health Emergency of International Concern by the WHO and since it has infected more than 3 million individuals spreading in almost every country in the world, reaching pandemic proportions[1]. We first select a panel of users, based on the condition of being active during the pre-outbreak period and during the week between 22 and 28 February 2020, i.e. for whom at least one data record has been collected both before and after the outbreak. The radius of gyration of a user, rg, provides a measure of the spatial range of a users’ mobility patterns[11].

Results

Conclusion