Human mobility and infection from Covid-19 in the Osaka metropolitan area

Haruka Kato; Atsushi Takizawa

doi:10.1038/s42949-022-00066-w

Human mobility and infection from Covid-19 in the Osaka metropolitan area

NPJ Urban Sustain. 2022;2(1):20. doi: 10.1038/s42949-022-00066-w. Epub 2022 Aug 2.

Authors

Haruka Kato¹, Atsushi Takizawa¹

Affiliation

¹ Department of Housing and Environmental Design, Graduate School of Human Life and Ecology, Osaka Metropolitan University, Osaka, 5588585 Japan.

Abstract

Controlling human mobility is thought to be an effective measure to prevent the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic. This study aims to clarify the human mobility types that impacted the number of COVID-19 cases during the medium-term COVID-19 pandemic in the Osaka metropolitan area. The method used in this study was analysis of the statistical relationship between human mobility changes and the total number of COVID-19 cases after two weeks. In conclusion, the results indicate that it is essential to control the human mobility of groceries/pharmacies to between -5 and 5% and that of parks to more than -20%. The most significant finding for urban sustainability is that urban transit was not found to be a source of infection. Hence governments in cities around the world may be able to encourage communities to return to transit mobility, if they are able to follow the kind of hygiene processes conducted in Osaka.

Keywords: Risk factors; Science, technology and society.