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Shubin M, Brustad HK, Midtbø JE, Günther F, Alessandretti L, Ala-Nissila T, Scalia Tomba G, Kivelä M, Chan LYH, Leskelä L
PLoS Comput Biol 20 (6) e1012182 [2024-06-00; online 2024-06-12]
Restrictions of cross-border mobility are typically used to prevent an emerging disease from entering a country in order to slow down its spread. However, such interventions can come with a significant societal cost and should thus be based on careful analysis and quantitative understanding on their effects. To this end, we model the influence of cross-border mobility on the spread of COVID-19 during 2020 in the neighbouring Nordic countries of Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden. We investigate the immediate impact of cross-border travel on disease spread and employ counterfactual scenarios to explore the cumulative effects of introducing additional infected individuals into a population during the ongoing epidemic. Our results indicate that the effect of inter-country mobility on epidemic growth is non-negligible essentially when there is sizeable mobility from a high prevalence country or countries to a low prevalence one. Our findings underscore the critical importance of accurate data and models on both epidemic progression and travel patterns in informing decisions related to inter-country mobility restrictions.
PubMed 38865414
DOI 10.1371/journal.pcbi.1012182
Crossref 10.1371/journal.pcbi.1012182
pmc: PMC11198903
pii: PCOMPBIOL-D-23-01783