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Advance Monitoring of COVID-19 Incidence Based on Taxi Mobility: The Infection Ratio Measure

Authors :
Jesus S. Aguilar-Ruiz
Roberto Ruiz
Raúl Giráldez
Source :
Healthcare, Vol 12, Iss 5, p 517 (2024)
Publication Year :
2024
Publisher :
MDPI AG, 2024.

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has had a profound impact on various aspects of our lives, affecting personal, occupational, economic, and social spheres. Much has been learned since the early 2020s, which will be very useful when the next pandemic emerges. In general, mobility and virus spread are strongly related. However, most studies analyze the impact of COVID-19 on mobility, but not much research has focused on analyzing the impact of mobility on virus transmission, especially from the point of view of monitoring virus incidence, which is extremely important for making sound decisions to control any epidemiological threat to public health. As a result of a thorough analysis of COVID-19 and mobility data, this work introduces a novel measure, the Infection Ratio (IR), which is not sensitive to underestimation of positive cases and is very effective in monitoring the pandemic’s upward or downward evolution when it appears to be more stable, thus anticipating possible risk situations. For a bounded spatial context, we can infer that there is a significant threshold in the restriction of mobility that determines a change of trend in the number of infections that, if maintained for a minimum period, would notably increase the chances of keeping the spread of disease under control. Results show that IR is a reliable indicator of the intensity of infection, and an effective measure for early monitoring and decision making in smart cities.

Details

Language :
English
ISSN :
22279032
Volume :
12
Issue :
5
Database :
Directory of Open Access Journals
Journal :
Healthcare
Publication Type :
Academic Journal
Accession number :
edsdoj.0848a2ada564c719f59940e4433f911
Document Type :
article
Full Text :
https://doi.org/10.3390/healthcare12050517