Targeted Interventions Reduce the Spread of COVID-19: Simulation Study on Real Mobility Data

Wang, Haotian; Ghosh, Abhirup; Ding, Jiaxin; Sarkar, Rik; Gao, Jie

Various intervention methods have been introduced worldwide to slow down the spread of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, by limiting human mobility in different ways. While large scale lockdown strategies are effective in reducing the spread rate, they come at a cost of significantly limited societal functions. We show that natural human mobility has high diversity and heterogeneity such that a small group of individuals and gathering venues play an important role in the spread of the disease. We discover that interventions that focus on protecting the most active individuals and most popular venues can significantly reduce the peak infection rate and the total number of infected people while retaining high levels of social activity overall. This trend is observed universally in multi-agent simulations using three mobility data sets of different scales, resolutions, and modalities (check-ins at seven different cities, WiFi connection events at a university, and GPS traces of electric bikes), and suggests that strategies that exploit the network effect in human mobility provide a better balance between disease control and normal social activities.