The role of mobility and sanitary measures on Covid-19 in Costa Rica, March through July 2020

TL;DR

This study analyzes how changes in human mobility and sanitary measures affected COVID-19 transmission in Costa Rica during early 2020, identifying significant shifts in case trends linked to mobility patterns and public health interventions.

Contribution

It introduces a combined analysis of mobility data and change-point detection to assess the impact of sanitary measures on COVID-19 spread in Costa Rica.

Findings

Identified two key periods with significant changes in case trends.

Established a lagged association between mobility reductions and case decline.

Linked mobility patterns to specific sanitary measures implemented.

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to infer the effects that changes on human mobility had on the transmission dynamics during the first four months of the SARS-CoV-2 outbreak in Costa Rica, before community transmission was established in the country. By using parametric and non parametric detection change-point techniques we were able to identify two different periods where at least the trend and variability of new daily cases significantly changed. In order to combine this information with population movement, we use data from Google Mobility Trends that allow us to estimate the lag between the rate of new daily cases and each of the categories established by Google. The information is then used to establish an association between changes in population mobility and the sanitary measures taken during the study period.