ArticleJournal of epidemiology2022
Inter-prefectural Travel and Network Connectedness During the COVID-19 Pandemic in Japan.
Article in Journal of epidemiology, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 5 papers.
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Who cites it
5 citing papers in PubMed, 14 citations in OpenAlex.
- Regional assessment is useful for identifying populations at high-risk of hepatitis B virus transmission: A nationwide analysis of population-based surveillance including the COVID-19 pandemic era.Global health & medicine · 2025Article
- Public holidays increased the transmission of COVID-19 in Japan, 2020-2021: a mathematical modelling study.Epidemiology and health · 2024Article
- Sustaining self-restraint until the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic in Tokyo.Scientific reports · 2022Article
- Go To Travel campaign and the geographic spread of COVID-19 in Japan.BMC infectious diseases · 2022Article
- Changes in Health Care Access during the COVID-19 Pandemic: Estimates of National Japanese Data, June 2020-October 2021.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2022Article
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Authors and funding
9 authors at 6 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundIncreases in human mobility have been linked to rises in novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) transmission. The pandemic era in Japan has been characterized by changes in inter-prefectural mobility across state of emergency (SOE) declarations and travel campaigns, but they have yet to be characterized.
methodsUsing Yahoo Japan mobility data extracted from the smartphones of more than 10 million Japanese residents, we calculated the monthly number of inter-prefectural travel instances, stratified by residential prefecture and destination prefecture. We then used this adjacency matrix to calculate two network connectedness metrics, closeness centrality and effective distance, that reliably predict disease transmission.
resultsInter-prefectural mobility and network connectedness decreased most considerably during the first SOE, but this decrease dampened with each successive SOE. Mobility and network connectedness increased during the Go To Travel campaign. Travel volume between distant prefectures decreased more than travel between prefectures with geographic proximity. Closeness centrality was found to be negatively correlated with the rate of COVID-19 infection across prefectures, with the strength of this association increasing in tandem with the infection rate. Changes in effective distance were more visible among geographically isolated prefectures (Hokkaido and Okinawa) than among metropolitan, central prefectures (Tokyo, Aichi, Osaka, and Fukuoka).
conclusionThe magnitude of reductions in human mobility decreased with each subsequent state of emergency, consistent with pandemic fatigue. The association between network connectedness and rates of COVID-19 infection remained visible throughout the entirety of the pandemic period, suggesting that inter-prefectural mobility may have contributed to disease spread.
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