The changing patterns of COVID-19 transmissibility during the social unrest in the United States: A nationwide ecological study with a before-and-after comparison

Jinjun Ran; Shi Zhao; Lefei Han; Marc K C Chong; Yulan Qiu; Yiwei Yang; Jiayi Wang; Yushan Wu; Mohammad Javanbakht; Maggie H Wang; Daihai He

doi:10.1016/j.onehlt.2020.100201

The changing patterns of COVID-19 transmissibility during the social unrest in the United States: A nationwide ecological study with a before-and-after comparison

One Health. 2021 Jun:12:100201. doi: 10.1016/j.onehlt.2020.100201. Epub 2020 Dec 1.

Authors

Jinjun Ran^{1

2}, Shi Zhao^{3

4}, Lefei Han⁵, Marc K C Chong^{3

4}, Yulan Qiu², Yiwei Yang², Jiayi Wang⁶, Yushan Wu³, Mohammad Javanbakht⁷, Maggie H Wang^{3

4}, Daihai He⁸

Affiliations

¹ School of Public Health, Li Ka Shing Faculty of Medicine, University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong Special Administrative Region.
² School of Public Health, Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine, Shanghai, China.
³ JC School of Public Health and Primary Care, Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong Special Administrative Region.
⁴ CUHK Shenzhen Research Institute, Shenzhen, China.
⁵ School of Nursing, Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong Special Administrative Region.
⁶ College of Architecture and Environment, Sichuan University, Chengdu, China.
⁷ Nephrology and Urology Research Center, Baqiyatallah University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran.
⁸ Department of Applied Mathematics, Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong Special Administrative Region.

Abstract

Nationwide mass social unrest has emerged in the US since May 25 and raised broad concerns about its impacts on the local COVID-19 epidemics. We compared the COVID-19 transmissibility between May 19-May 25 and May 29-June 4 for each state of the US. We found that social unrest is likely associated with the rebound of the COVID-19 transmissibility, which might raise difficulties in the pandemic control.