Measuring human mobility, COVID-19 spread risk and intervention effectiveness

Human mobility is a cross-cutting factor across sciences, from socioeconomic development to infectious disease control. The evolution of the COVID-19 pandemic is partly due to today’s high international mobility, and the pandemic itself has also significantly modified global mobility. Since January 2020, Dr Lai and colleagues have been conducting a series of influential COVID-19 studies, using epidemiological and mobility data obtained from different novel ‘big data’ sources. These studies have been published in leading scientific journals such as Nature, Science, Nature Medicine, Nature Human Behaviour, and Nature Communications. These research also has had strong policy impacts, helping the WHO, Africa/Europe/China CDCs, and many other countries and organisations, to plan their COVID-19 response and preparedness. In this webinar, Dr Lai will give a brief talk about his studies for understanding the changes of human mobility, COVID-19 transmission dynamics, and the effectiveness of relevant interventions.