The Coupled Impact of Emergency Responses and Population Flows on the COVID‐19 Pandemic in China

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has spread around the world and requires effective control measures. Like the human-to-human transmission of the severe acute respiratory syndrome-coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), the distribution of COVID-19 was driven by population flow and required emergency response measures to slow down its spread and degrade the epidemic risk. The local epidemic risk of COVID-19 is a combination of emergency response measures and population flow. Because of the spatial heterogeneity, the different impacts of coupled emergency responses and population flow on the COVID-19 epidemic during the outbreak period and a control period are unclear. We examined and compared the impact of emergency response measures and population flow on China's epidemic risk after the Wuhan lockdown during the outbreak period and a control period. We found that the population flow out of Wuhan had a long-term impact on the epidemic's spread. In the outbreak period, a large population flow out of Wuhan led to nationwide migration mobility, which directly increased the epidemic in each province. Meanwhile, quick emergency responses mitigated the spread. Although low population flow to provinces far from Hubei delayed the outbreak in those provinces, relatively delayed emergency response increased the epidemic in the control period. Consequently, due to the strong transmission ability of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, no region correctly estimated the epidemic, and the relaxed emergency response raised the epidemic risks in the context of the outbreak.