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The study, which was published last week in Nature, followed the movement of 98 million people in the metropolitan areas of Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco and Washington DC.
The researchers concluded that in areas where the infection rate is higher it is possible to establish a link with the movement of people in very specific “points of interest”. In particular, crowded commercial spaces in areas where the population has low income.
“Our model predicts that a small minority of POIs are responsible for a vast majority of infections and that restricting maximum capacity at each of these POIs is more effective than uniformly reducing mobility,” the study read. . “We also found that The groups with greater economic difficulties have not been able to reduce mobility as much as other groups and that the points of interest they visit are more crowded and therefore have greater risk ”.
This research work strengthens public health decisions to reduce overcrowding in public spaces and close certain businesses to control the rate of Covid-19 infection.
TO New York Times, one of the researchers, Jure Leskovec, said the study also found that restaurants are the spaces of most concern. “By far the riskiest spaces,” he said. Approximately four times more than gyms or cafes, followed by hotels ”.
This same week, at 360 hours on RTP 3, the pulmonologist António Diniz explained that the risk was higher in restaurants because two essential respiratory hygiene measures are automatically abandoned. The proximity, with people often face to face and the lack of the mask, which is removed for people to eat.
The Stanford University study also concluded that in restaurants in less favored areas the risk is higher as the space tends to be smaller and more crowded.
In the same vein, stores in low-income areas have 60% more people per square meter and people tend to stay longer inside them, the study indicates. Again, the risk is higher.
Therefore, the researchers warn of the risk of opening all businesses 100 percent. The impact on the infection rate would be exponential. “The first important conclusion we reached with this model is that if people continued their lives without restrictions, one-third of the population in the 10 largest cities in the United States would become infected after a month,” said Jure Leskovec.
The solution, he adds, is to open the economy to different levels.
