The Impact of Public Transportation on COVID-19 in the United Kingdom

Abstract

UK was one of the worst impacted countries by the COVID-19 pandemic. As of January 2021, The number of coronavirus cases in the UK has exceeded two million, while the death toll exceeded 60,000. The leading cause for the spread of the virus was identified as the droplets ejected by infected individuals. Hence, to prevent the spread of the virus, governments worldwide have implemented restrictive measures to decrease population mobility. The UK had followed many strategies during their combat against the disease. Their strategies were: herd immunity, lockdowns, and partial lockdowns. After detecting a more infectious strain of the virus, strict restrictions are again implemented in the UK. In this paper, we analyze the relationship between coronavirus cases and public transportation mobility in the UK. Our analysis results show that mobility restrictions are highly effective, but it takes about nine days to see the full impact on the number of new COVID-19 cases.

Note: Funding: No funding is provided from any source.

Declaration of Interests: The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Keywords: Coronavirus, pandemic, regression analysis, mobility, transmission, public transportation, United Kingdom