We just posted a new preprint "Socioeconomic determinants of mobility responses during the first wave of COVID-19 in Italy: from provinces to neighbourhoods" https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.11.16.20232413v1

In this work, we studied the socio-economic determinants of mobility changes during the first COVID-19 wave in Italy, using anonymized cell phone data, since the start of the outbreak and after the lift of the restrictions.

We found that in Italy, the local structure of the labour market explains most of the variation observed in the mobility responses across provinces, over the full course of the first wave.

In large urban areas, we measured a clear effect of desertification of the historic city centers, which persisted even after the end of the lockdown.

In the end, our work shows that the responses to non-pharmaceutical interventions in Italy varied significantly depending on the socio-economic features at different spatial scales. These findings provide insights into how individuals adapt to interventions during the pandemic.

Thanks to the best collaborators @laetitiagvn @paolo_bajardi @social_pepe! In particular, big credits to Laetitia and Paolo who led the statistical analysis and the whole work.

Thanks to @Cuebiq for sharing their anonymized and privacy-enhanced mobility data. Thanks to @FondazioneCRT for the continuous support of our data for good research initiatives.