State-Level Stay-at-Home Orders and Objectively Measured Movement in the United States During the COVID-19 Pandemic.

ABSTRACT:

Objective

Social distancing has been one of the primary interventions used to slow the spread of COVID-19 during the ongoing pandemic. Although statewide stay-at-home orders in the United States received a large degree of media and political attention, relatively little peer-reviewed research has examined the impacts of such orders on social distancing behaviors.

Method

This study used daily GPS-derived movement from 2858 counties in the United States from March 1 to May 7, 2020, to test the degree to which changes in state-level stay-at-home orders were associated with movement outside the home.

Results

From early March to early April, people in counties with state-level stay-at-home orders decreased their movement significantly more than counties without state-level

SUBMITTER: Bourassa KJ 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8238409 | biostudies-literature | 2021 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature