On the Interplay of Regional Mobility, Social Connectedness, and the Spread of COVID-19 in Germany

Understand

Since the primary mode of respiratory virus transmission is person-to-person interaction, we are required to reconsider physical interaction patterns to mitigate the number of people infected with COVID-19.

• While research has shown that non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPI) had an evident impact on national mobility patterns, we investigate the relative regional mobility behaviour to assess the effect of human movement on the spread of COVID-19.
• In particular, we explore the impact of human mobility and social connectivity derived from Facebook activities on the weekly rate of new infections in Germany between March 3rd and June 22nd, 2020.
• Our results confirm that reduced social activity lowers the infection rate, accounting for regional and temporal patterns.