Mobile phone data reveal spatiotemporal dynamics of Omicron infections in Beijing after relaxing zero-COVID policy

TL;DR

This study utilized large-scale mobile phone data to accurately track the spatiotemporal spread of Omicron infections in Beijing after the zero-COVID policy was relaxed, revealing detailed epidemic dynamics and disparities.

Contribution

It introduces a novel method of inferring individual infection status from mobile phone location data to reconstruct citywide infection dynamics.

Findings

Peak infection occurred on 21 December 2022.

By 14 January 2023, 80.1% of Beijing's population had been infected.

Infection spread showed significant demographic and spatial disparities.

Abstract

The swift relaxation of the zero-COVID policy in December 2022 led to an unprecedented surge in Omicron variant infections in China. With the suspension of mandatory testing, tracking this epidemic outbreak was challenging because infections were often underrepresented in survey and testing results, which only involved partial populations. We used large-scale mobile phone data to estimate daily infections in Beijing from November 2022 to January 2023. We demonstrated that an individual's location records of mobile phone could be used to infer his or her infectious status. Then, the derived status of millions of individuals could be summed to reconstruct the citywide spatiotemporal dynamics of infections. We found that the infection incidence peaked on 21 December, and 80.1% of populations had been infected by 14 January 2023 in Beijing. Furthermore, infection dynamics exhibited significant demographic and spatiotemporal disparities. Our work provides a ubiquitous and high-coverage data source for monitoring epidemic outbreaks.