ArticleInternational journal of health geographics2021
Domestic and international mobility trends in the United Kingdom during the COVID-19 pandemic: an analysis of facebook data.
Article in International journal of health geographics, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 17 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
17 citing papers in PubMed, 49 citations in OpenAlex.
- The association between mobility and crime in England and Wales.Crime science · 2026Article
- Capturing the spatiotemporal spread of COVID-19 in 30 European countries during 2020 - 2022.BMC public health · 2025Article
- A novel framework for inferring dynamic infectious disease transmission with graph attention: a COVID-19 case study in Korea.BMC public health · 2025Article
- Comparing and integrating human mobility data sources for measles transmission modeling in Zambia.PLOS global public health · 2025Article
- Investigating the potential of aggregated mobility indices for inferring public transport ridership changes.PloS one · 2024Article
- Human mobility and the infectious disease transmission: A systematic review.Geo-spatial information science = Diqui kongjian xinxi kexue xuebao · 2024Article
- The limits of human mobility traces to predict the spread of COVID-19: A transfer entropy approach.PNAS nexus · 2023Article
- Article
- Using geospatial social media data for infectious disease studies: a systematic review.International journal of digital earth · 2023Article
- Article
- High-resolution estimates of social distancing feasibility, mapped for urban areas in sub-Saharan Africa.Scientific data · 2022Article
- Social media mining under the COVID-19 context: Progress, challenges, and opportunities.International journal of applied earth observation and geoinformation : ITC journal · 2022Article
- Mapping urban physical distancing constraints, sub-Saharan Africa: a case study from Kenya.Bulletin of the World Health Organization · 2022Article
- The role of inter-regional mobility in forecasting SARS-CoV-2 transmission.Journal of the Royal Society, Interface · 2022Article
- Spatial growth rate of emerging SARS-CoV-2 lineages in England, September 2020-December 2021.Epidemiology and infection · 2022Article
- Evidence of pandemic fatigue associated with stricter tiered COVID-19 restrictions.PLOS digital health · 2022Article
- Modeling international mobility using roaming cell phone traces during COVID-19 pandemic.EPJ data science · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
5 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundSince early March 2020, the COVID-19 epidemic across the United Kingdom has led to a range of social distancing policies, which resulted in changes to mobility across different regions. An understanding of how these policies impacted travel patterns over time and at different spatial scales is important for designing effective strategies, future pandemic planning and in providing broader insights on the population geography of the country. Crowd level data on mobile phone usage can be used as a proxy for population mobility patterns and provide a way of quantifying in near-real time the impact of social distancing measures on changes in mobility.
methodsHere we explore patterns of change in densities, domestic and international flows and co-location of Facebook users in the UK from March 2020 to March 2021.
resultsWe find substantial heterogeneities across time and region, with large changes observed compared to pre-pademic patterns. The impacts of periods of lockdown on distances travelled and flow volumes are evident, with each showing variations, but some significant reductions in co-location rates. Clear differences in multiple metrics of mobility are seen in central London compared to the rest of the UK, with each of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland showing significant deviations from England at times. Moreover, the impacts of rapid changes in rules on international travel to and from the UK are seen in substantial fluctuations in traveller volumes by destination.
conclusionsWhile questions remain about the representativeness of the Facebook data, previous studies have shown strong correspondence with census-based data and alternative mobility measures, suggesting that findings here are valuable for guiding strategies.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.