Statewide COVID‐19 Stay‐at‐Home Orders and Population Mobility in the United States

• Published date: 01 December 2020
• Author: Grant D. Jacobsen,Kathryn H. Jacobsen
• Date: 01 December 2020
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/wmh3.350

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doi: 10.1002/wmh3.350

© 2020 Policy Studies Organization

Statewide COVID‐19 Stay‐at‐Home Orders and

Population Mobility in the United States

Grant D. Jacobsen and Kathryn H. Jacobsen

Many jurisdictions enacted stay‐at‐home orders (also called shelter‐in‐place orders, safer‐at‐home

orders, or lockdowns)when SARS‐CoV‐2 began spreading in the United States. Based on Google

mobility data, every state had substantially fewer visits to transit stations, retail and recreation

facilities, workplaces, grocery stores, and pharmacies by the end of March 2020 than in the previous

two months. The mean decrease in visitation rates across destination categories was about 30 percent

in states without stay‐at‐home orders and 40 percent in states with stay‐at‐home orders. Similarly,

there were fewer routing requests received by Apple in large cities for public transportation, walking,

and driving, with a 10 percentage point greater mean reduction in metropolitan areas under statewide

stay‐at‐home orders. The pandemic led to large decreases in mobility even in states without legal

restrictions on travel, but statewide orders were effective public health policy tools for reducing human

movement below the level achieved through voluntary behavior change.

KEY WORDS: coronavirus, transportation, health behavior

Introduction

The public health measures used to prevent and control the transmission of

infectious diseases include a variety of nonpharmaceutical interventions (NPIs). For

contagious infections, one of the most valuable NPIs is limiting the number of

contacts between potentially infected individuals and those who might be sus-

ceptible to the pathogen. During an epidemic or a pandemic of an infectious dis-

ease, public health prevention and control interventions may include restrictions on

local and international travel and trade (Jacobsen, 2018). Some forms of “social

distancing”or “physical distancing”may be voluntary, but others may be man-

dated by governments and enforceable by law.

One way to reduce contacts is to separate infectious individuals from the

general population. Measures used to prevent individuals who have a confirmed

diagnosis of an infectious disease from infecting caregivers, other health‐care staff,

and other patients have typically been described as isolation (Wilder‐Smith &

Freedman, 2020). Isolation protocols in hospitals may require patients to be treated

in negative pressure rooms, and personnel who enter the treatment room may need

to wear full protective gear, including gloves, gowns, eye protection, and face

masks or shields.