COVID-19, community response, public policy, and travel patterns: A tale of Hong Kong

Abstract

The COVID-19 outbreak has necessitated a critical review of urban transportation and its role in society against the backdrop of an exogenous shock. This article extends the transportation literature regarding community responses to the COVID-19 pandemic and what lessons can be obtained from the case of Hong Kong in 2020. Individual behavior and collective responsibility are considered crucial to ensure both personal and community wellbeing in a pandemic context. Trends in government policies, the number of infectious cases, and community mobility are examined using multiple data sources. The mobility changes that occurred during the state of emergency are revealed by a time-series analysis of variables that measure both the epidemiological severity level and government stringency. The results demonstrate a high response capability of the local government, inhabitants, and communities. Communities in Hong Kong are found to have reacted faster than the implementation of health interventions, whereas the government policies effectively reduced the number of infection cases. The ways in which community action are vital to empower flexible and adaptive community responses are also explored. The results indicate that voluntary community involvement constitutes a necessary condition to help inform and reshape future transport policy and response strategies to mitigate the pandemic.

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“…Second, real-time NPIs in the past few months are recorded and simulated in our model to understand their effectiveness. However, preventive behaviors on the individual level (e.g., human mobility and face covering), which dictate the likelihood of infection, are not considered in our simulation [ 43 , 44 ]. Thus, future extensions of the model should emphasize these behavioral factors to better estimate virus transmissibility.…”

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“…How the required reduction of mobility impacts the economic activity is not clear, as some researchers argue that increasing activity in parks and groceries/pharmacies has much less effect on the reproductive rate than staying at home [ 44 ]. Travel patterns appear to have a huge impact in the propagation of the virus, requiring a combination of sensible public policies and the willing collaboration of the community, as demonstrated by the case of Hong Kong [ 45 ]. Big data extensive studies have found that imposed public policies play a small role in the reduction of mobility [ 46 ].…”

Reopening International Borders without Quarantine: Contact Tracing Integrated Policy against COVID-19

“…Second, real-time NPIs in the past few months are recorded and simulated in our model to understand their effectiveness. However, preventive behaviors on the individual level (e.g., human mobility, face covering), which dictate the likelihood of infection (Chan et al, 2021;Cowling et al, 2020), are not considered in our simulation. Thus, future extensions of the model should emphasize these behavioral factors to better estimate virus transmissibility.…”