The year 2020 saw a rapid global spread of the highly contagious novel coronavirus COVID-19. To halt the spread of the disease, decision makers and governments across the world have been forced to limit mobility and human interaction, which led to a complete lockdown and the closure of nonessential businesses and public places in many cities and countries. Although effective in curbing the spread of the disease, such measures have had major social and economic impacts, particularly at locations where a complete lockdown was required. In such unprecedented circumstances, decision makers were faced with the dilemma of deciding on how and when to limit mobility to curb the spread of the disease, while being considerate of the significant economic impacts of enforcing such a lockdown. Limited research in this area meant that decision makers were forced to experiment different courses of action without fully understanding the consequences of those actions. To address this critical gap and to provide decision makers with more insights on how to manage mobility during a global pandemic, this paper conducts statistical change point analysis of mobility data from 10 different countries with the aims of establishing links between mobility trends, COVID-19 infections, and COVID-19 mortality rates across different countries where different policies were adopted. Among other findings, the analysis revealed that slow responders experienced significantly higher mortality rates per 100,000 people and were forced to implement stricter lockdown strategies when compared to early responders. The analysis also shows that operating at 40% level of mobility is achievable if appropriate action is taken early enough. The findings of this study are extremely valuable in helping nations better manage a, highly anticipated, second wave of COVID-19 or any other highly contagious global pandemic.

2020年，具有高度传染性的新型冠状病毒COVID-19在全球迅速传播。为了阻止这种疾病的传播，全世界的决策者和政府都被迫限制人员流动和人与人之间的互动，从而导致全面封锁，并关闭了许多城市和国家中不必要的企业和公共场所。尽管有效地遏制了疾病的传播，但这些措施已经产生了重大的社会和经济影响，特别是在需要完全封锁的地区。在这种前所未有的情况下，决策者面临着两难选择：决定如何以及何时限制行动以遏制疾病的蔓延，同时考虑到实施这种封锁的重大经济影响。在这一领域的有限研究意味着，决策者被迫尝试不同的行动方案，而没有完全了解这些行动的后果。为了解决这一关键差距，并为决策者提供有关在全球大流行期间如何管理出行的更多见解，本文对来自10个不同国家的出行数据进行了统计变化点分析，目的是在出行趋势与COVID-19之间建立联系采取不同政策的不同国家/地区的感染和COVID-19死亡率。分析还发现，与早期响应者相比，反应迟钝的人每10万人的死亡率要高得多，并且被迫实施更严格的锁定策略。分析还表明，如果足够早地采取适当的措施，则可以达到40％的机动性水平。这项研究的发现对帮助各国更好地管理第二轮COVID-19浪潮或任何其他具有高度传染性的全球流行病具有极其重要的价值。