Mobile Phone-Based Population Flow Data for the COVID-19 Outbreak in Mainland China.

Xin Lu,Tong Wang,Shuo Qin,Jing Tan,Gordon H Guyatt,Wei Zhang,Lehana Thabane,Simon I Hay,Ziqiang Cao,Laurie B Marczak,Xin Sun,Shiyao Huang,Yiquan Xiong,Chunrong Liu

doi:10.34133/2021/9796431

Abstract

Human migration is one of the driving forces for amplifying localized infectious disease outbreaks into widespread epidemics. During the outbreak of COVID-19 in China, the travels of the population from Wuhan have furthered the spread of the virus as the period coincided with the world's largest population movement to celebrate the Chinese New Year. We have collected and made public an anonymous and aggregated mobility dataset extracted from mobile phones at the national level, describing the outflows of population travel from Wuhan. We evaluated the correlation between population movements and the virus spread by the dates when the number of diagnosed cases was documented. From Jan 1 to Jan 22 of 2020, a total of 20.2 million movements of at-risk population occurred from Wuhan to other regions in China. A large proportion of these movements occurred within Hubei province (84.5%), and a substantial increase of travels was observed even before the beginning of the official Chinese Spring Festival Travel. The outbound flows from Wuhan before the lockdown were found strongly correlated with the number of diagnosed cases in the destination cities (log-transformed). The regions with the highest volume of receiving at-risk populations were identified. The movements of the at-risk population were strongly associated with the virus spread. These results together with province-by-province reports have been provided to governmental authorities to aid policy decisions at both the state and provincial levels. We believe that the effort in making this data available is extremely important for COVID-19 modelling and prediction.

Highlights

On December 31, 2019, the National Health Commission of China informed the World Health Organization (WHO) about a cluster of emergent cases with atypical pneumonia in Wuhan [1]
On January 30, 2020, WHO announced that the outbreak of the novel coronavirus pneumonia (COVID-19) in China constitutes a public health emergency of international concern (PHEIC) [4]
The mobility data was extracted from call detail records (CDR) of all users from one of the largest operator, China Unicom, and was extrapolated to the whole network to build movement estimates for those who have left Wuhan to other regions of China, spreading infection risks across the country

Summary

Introduction

On December 31, 2019, the National Health Commission of China informed the World Health Organization (WHO) about a cluster of emergent cases with atypical pneumonia in Wuhan [1]. On January 30, 2020, WHO announced that the outbreak of the novel coronavirus pneumonia (COVID-19) in China constitutes a public health emergency of international concern (PHEIC) [4]. During the outbreak of COVID-19 in China, the travels of the population from Wuhan have furthered the spread of the virus as the period coincided with the world’s largest population movement to celebrate the Chinese New Year. We evaluated the correlation between population movements and the virus spread by the dates when the number of diagnosed cases was documented. The movements of the at-risk population were strongly associated with the virus spread. These results together with province-by-province reports have been provided to governmental authorities to aid policy decisions at both the state and provincial levels. We believe that the effort in making this data available is extremely important for COVID-19 modelling and prediction

Methods

Results

Conclusion