Abstract For the first time in history, on March 17, 2020, the European Union closed all its external borders in an attempt to contain the spreading of the coronavirus 2019, COVID-19. Throughout two past months, governments around the world have implemented massive travel restrictions and border control to mitigate the outbreak of this global pandemic. However, the precise effects of travel restrictions on the outbreak dynamics of COVID-19 remain unknown. Here we combine a global network mobility model with a local epidemiology model to simulate and predict the outbreak dynamics and outbreak control of COVID-19 across Europe. We correlate our mobility model to passenger air travel statistics and calibrate our epidemiology model using the number of reported COVID-19 cases for each country. Our simulations show that mobility networks of air travel can predict the emerging global diffusion pattern of a pandemic at the early stages of the outbreak. Our results suggest that an unconstrained mobility would have significantly accelerated the spreading of COVID-19, especially in Central Europe, Spain, and France. Ultimately, our network epidemiology model can inform political decision making and help identify exit strategies from current travel restrictions and total lockdown.

中文翻译：

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欧洲 COVID-19 的疫情动态以及旅行限制的影响


摘要 2020 年 3 月 17 日，欧盟历史上首次关闭了所有外部边界，试图遏制 2019 年冠状病毒（COVID-19）的传播。在过去的两个月里，世界各国政府实施了大规模的旅行限制和边境管制，以减轻这一全球大流行病的爆发。然而，旅行限制对 COVID-19 疫情动态的确切影响仍不清楚。在这里，我们将全球网络移动模型与当地流行病学模型相结合，来模拟和预测整个欧洲的 COVID-19 疫情动态和疫情控制。我们将我们的出行模型与旅客航空旅行统计数据相关联，并使用每个国家报告的 COVID-19 病例数来校准我们的流行病学模型。我们的模拟表明，航空旅行的流动网络可以在疫情爆发的早期阶段预测流行病的全球扩散模式。我们的结果表明，不受限制的流动性会显着加速 COVID-19 的传播，特别是在中欧、西班牙和法国。最终，我们的网络流行病学模型可以为政治决策提供信息，并帮助确定当前旅行限制和全面封锁的退出策略。