Global and local mobility as a barometer for COVID-19 dynamics

The spreading of infectious diseases including COVID-19 depends on human interactions. In an environment where behavioral patterns and physical contacts are constantly evolving according to new governmental regulations, measuring these interactions is a major challenge. Mobility has emerged as an indicator for human activity and, implicitly, for human interactions. Here, we study the coupling between mobility and COVID-19 dynamics and show that variations in global air traffic and local driving mobility can be used to stratify different disease phases. For ten European countries, our study shows a maximal correlation between driving mobility and disease dynamics with a time lag of [Formula: see text] days. Our findings suggest that trends in local mobility allow us to forecast the outbreak dynamics of COVID-19 for a window of two weeks and adjust local control strategies in real time.