Lockdown and unlock for COVID-19 and its impact on residential mobility in India: an analysis of the COVID-19 Community Mobility Reports, 2020.

Saha, Jay; Chouhan, Pradip

BACKGROUND As an upshot, the countrywide lockdown and unlock period due to the COVID-19 pandemic has been supportive of altering residential mobility trends in India. OBJECTIVE The study also investigated the impact of COVID-19 lockdown and unlocks period on residential mobility trends, using spatial-time series daily change across different states and union territories of India. DATA & METHODS This study has been based on time-series data of the daily percentage of change of residential mobility from baseline in India. Conditional formatting techniques, box plotting, time-series trends plotting method, spatial kriging interpolation mapping techniques have been employed to show mobility trends. RESULTS About 31.5%, 30.8%, 26.2%, 23%, 17.6%, and 18.2% of the increase in residential mobility from the pre-lockdown phase are observed during lockdown phase 1, phase 2, phase 3, and phase 4 unlock 1.0, and unlock 2.0 in India respectively due to people move towards home or place of residence during the COVID-19 pandemic in India. After lockdown initiated, up to 31 st July 2020, residential mobility has been less increased in the north-eastern states of India and also eastern and extreme northern states of India. CONCLUSION Study can be used in public health strategies to drop the spread of COVID-19.