The effect of social movements on COVID-19 case increases and death in Turkey

Abstract

Objectives: This study aimed to determine whether there is a correlation between COVID-19 cases and deaths because of COVID-19 and community movements in Turkey and to develop a strategy for future outbreaks. Methods: The study's data covers COVID-19 cases and deaths between March 11, 2020, and December 16, 2021, and Turkey's Google community movements between these dates. The COVID-19 cases and deaths were obtained from Turkey's Ministry of Health COVID-19 Information Platform. Community mobility collated by Google is retail and recreation, supermarket and pharmacy, parks, public transport, workplaces visits, and residential. The data were transferred via ''SPSS (Statistical Package for Social Sciences) for Windows 25.0 (SPSS Inc, Chicago, IL'' and statistical analysis was performed. The Spearman correlation test was used as a statistical method. In the Kruskal-Wallis Test, categorical variables were created using increases and decreases in community movements based on the baseline. Results: A weak positive correlation between daily COVID-19 deaths and supermarket and pharmacy activity (r = 0.28 p < 0.01). A weak negative correlation with park activity (r = -0.23 p < 0.01). A weakly positive and significant relationship with workplace visits mobility (r = 0.10 p < 0.05). There was a weak positive significant relationship with public transport mobility (r = 0.10 p < 0.01), including a weak positive significant relationship with residential (r = 0.12 p < 0.01). Conclusions: Social distancing measures (such as reducing community mobility) and educating people on viral transmission in possible epidemics will save us time developing new diagnostic tests and vaccine studies.

Keywords

• COVID-19
• SARS-CoV-2
• Social distancing
• Pandemic