Modeling the impact of human mobility and travel restrictions on the potential spread of SARS-CoV-2 in Taiwan

Meng-Chun Chang; Rebecca Kahn; Yu-An Li; Cheng-Sheng Lee; Caroline O Buckee; Hsiao-Han Chang

We analyzed Facebook's movement data and found that intercity movement did not decrease between January 30 th and March 9 th in Taiwan among Facebook users ( Figure S6A ), suggesting that without travel restrictions imposed by the government, the public in Taiwan may not have reduced their frequency of travel voluntarily due to the awareness of SARS-CoV-2. We then examined the level to which travel restrictions could reduce the spread of SARS-CoV-2 in Taiwan at the initial stage of an outbreak. In both the contact model and the residence model, decreasing intracity movement had a much larger impact on P1000,3 ( Figure 1 ) and T1000,3 ( Figure S3 ) than decreasing intercity movement. The impact of reducing intercity travel was most evident in influencing how widespread the virus was: the infections were located in only a few cities at T1000,3 if intercity travel was reduced ( Figure S5 ).