Abstract
The COVID-19 pandemic is causing mass disruption to our daily lives. We integrate mobility data from mobile devices and area-level data to study the walking patterns of 1.62 million anonymous users in 10 metropolitan areas in the United States. The data covers the period from mid-February 2020 (pre-lockdown) to late June 2020 (easing of lockdown restrictions). We detect when users were walking, distance walked and time of the walk, and classify each walk as recreational or utilitarian. Our results reveal dramatic declines in walking, particularly utilitarian walking, while recreational walking has recovered and even surpassed pre-pandemic levels. Our findings also demonstrate important social patterns, widening existing inequalities in walking behavior. COVID-19 response measures have a larger impact on walking behavior for those from low-income areas and high use of public transportation. Provision of equal opportunities to support walking is key to opening up our society and economy.
Highlights
The COVID-19 pandemic is causing mass disruption to our daily lives
COVID-19 response measures differed between metropolitan areas, in most of the US, social distancing started after the declaration of a national emergency on March 13, 2020 and the schools and nonessential business closings during the following
Using multivariate linear mixed regression, we investigated the combined effect of area-level socio-demographic, health, and environmental variables on the amount of walking pre-pandemic and after COVID-19 response measures were introduced
Summary
The COVID-19 pandemic is causing mass disruption to our daily lives. We integrate mobility data from mobile devices and area-level data to study the walking patterns of 1.62 million anonymous users in 10 metropolitan areas in the United States. At timepoints during the pandemic, over half of the world’s population have been committed to stay at home for different periods of time, causing major disruptions to their daily lives. In the US, 50.0% [95% CI 49.1–51.0%] of adults engage in leisure walking activity and around 29.4% [95% CI 28.6–30.3%] in utilitarian (transportation, shopping, routine) walking[8] Despite these figures, only half of Americans self-report that they meet a minimum of 30 min of walking five or more times per week[9]. Given the large pre-pandemic inequalities in drivers and patterns of walking behavior, it should be expected that the impact of COVID-19 response measures on walking would show large variability between socio-demographic groups. Higher COVID-19 death rates were found in the most disadvantaged areas (proportion of persons living in poverty, proportion of crowded households, and concentration of extreme racial and socioeconomic segregation) and areas with the largest populations of people of color (proportion of the population that is nonwhite, non-Hispanic)
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