The Effective Lockdown: Analyzing the Effectiveness of State-Wide Lockdown Measures Through County-Level Mobility

Abstract

On January 20, 2020, the first confirmed case of 2019-nCoV (COVID-19) was reported in Snohomish County, Washington through an individual traveling from the Wuhan Providence in China – the epicenter of the novel pathogen’s first human-to-human transmission. Since the initial transmission in the United States, over 30 million individuals have tested positive across all US states and counties. Given the novelty of the virus’ biological response in humans, government entities and health organizations all over the world have worked feverishly over the past year to find efficient and economical tactics to slow the rapid spread of COVID-19, with little consistency across different measures. While some states and counties took a full-fledged approach to limit all non-essential travel, others took a far less severe stance in their mitigation efforts. This paper visualizes the various degrees of lockdown methodologies through county-level mobility to illustrate which states were able to control the spread of COVID-19 most effectively and efficiently.