Abstract
BackgroundSince early March 2020, the COVID-19 epidemic across the United Kingdom has led to a range of social distancing policies, which resulted in changes to mobility across different regions. An understanding of how these policies impacted travel patterns over time and at different spatial scales is important for designing effective strategies, future pandemic planning and in providing broader insights on the population geography of the country. Crowd level data on mobile phone usage can be used as a proxy for population mobility patterns and provide a way of quantifying in near-real time the impact of social distancing measures on changes in mobility.MethodsHere we explore patterns of change in densities, domestic and international flows and co-location of Facebook users in the UK from March 2020 to March 2021.ResultsWe find substantial heterogeneities across time and region, with large changes observed compared to pre-pademic patterns. The impacts of periods of lockdown on distances travelled and flow volumes are evident, with each showing variations, but some significant reductions in co-location rates. Clear differences in multiple metrics of mobility are seen in central London compared to the rest of the UK, with each of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland showing significant deviations from England at times. Moreover, the impacts of rapid changes in rules on international travel to and from the UK are seen in substantial fluctuations in traveller volumes by destination.ConclusionsWhile questions remain about the representativeness of the Facebook data, previous studies have shown strong correspondence with census-based data and alternative mobility measures, suggesting that findings here are valuable for guiding strategies.
Highlights
Since early March 2020, the COVID-19 epidemic across the United Kingdom has led to a range of social distancing policies, which resulted in changes to mobility across different regions
We summarise some of these insights through examination of the changes in domestic movement patterns and densities compared to a pre-pandemic baseline, the probability of two Facebook users from different home locations cooccurring in the same location, as well as variations in international travel in and out of the UK
We present summary findings from the analysis of Facebook user data, with additional outputs and analyses presented in Additional file 3
Summary
Since early March 2020, the COVID-19 epidemic across the United Kingdom has led to a range of social distancing policies, which resulted in changes to mobility across different regions. An understanding of how these policies impacted travel patterns over time and at different spatial scales is important for designing effective strategies, future pandemic planning and in providing broader insights on the population geography of the country. A wide variety of national and regional restrictions were put in place throughout the course of 2020 and into early 2021 This involved national stay at home ‘lockdown’ measures in March 2020, November 2020 and January 2021. International travel restrictions in and out of the UK were under constant review and change, as situations changed domestically and abroad Many of these mitigation policies involved restrictions relating to social contact and travel, but the effects of these on changes in population densities, travel patterns and mixing at fine spatial and temporal scales have not been examined together across the course of the pandemic
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