A high-frequency mobility big-data reveals how COVID-19 spread across professions, locations and age groups

PLoS Comput Biol. 2023 Apr 27;19(4):e1011083. doi: 10.1371/journal.pcbi.1011083. eCollection 2023 Apr.

Abstract

As infected and vaccinated population increases, some countries decided not to impose non-pharmaceutical intervention measures anymore and to coexist with COVID-19. However, we do not have a comprehensive understanding of its consequence, especially for China where most population has not been infected and most Omicron transmissions are silent. This paper aims to reveal the complete silent transmission dynamics of COVID-19 by agent-based simulations overlaying a big data of more than 0.7 million real individual mobility tracks without any intervention measures throughout a week in a Chinese city, with an extent of completeness and realism not attained in existing studies. Together with the empirically inferred transmission rate of COVID-19, we find surprisingly that with only 70 citizens to be infected initially, 0.33 million becomes infected silently at last. We also reveal a characteristic daily periodic pattern of the transmission dynamics, with peaks in mornings and afternoons. In addition, by inferring individual professions, visited locations and age group, we found that retailing, catering and hotel staff are more likely to get infected than other professions, and elderly and retirees are more likely to get infected at home than outside home.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Aged
  • Big Data
  • COVID-19* / epidemiology
  • COVID-19* / prevention & control
  • China / epidemiology
  • Humans
  • Occupations
  • SARS-CoV-2

Grants and funding

C.Z. was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No.61703136) and by the Natural Science Foundation of Hebei (No. F2020205012), and by the Youth Top Talent Project of Hebei Education Department (NO. BJ2020035), and by The Project Supported by Science Foundation of Hebei Normal University (No. L2023K04). The work by C.H.Y. was supported by the Research Grants Council of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, China (Projects No. EdUHK GRF 18301217, and No. GRF 18301119), the Dean’s Research Fund of the Faculty of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences, The Education University of Hong Kong (Projects No. FLASS/DRF 04418, No. FLASS/ROP 04396, and No. FLASS/DRF 04624), and the Internal Research Grant, The Education University of Hong Kong (Project No. RG67 2018-2019R R4015 and No. RG31 2020-2021R R4152). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.