Analyzing the Trends of COVID-19 and Human Activity Intensity in Malaysia

COVID-19 has struck the world with multiple waves. Each wave was caused by a variant and presented different peaks and baselines. This made the identification of waves with the time series of the cases a difficult task. Human activity intensities may affect the occurrence of an outbreak. We demonstrated a metric of time series, namely log-moving-average-ratio (LMAR), to identify the waves and directions of the changes in the disease cases and check-ins (MySejahtera). Based on the detected waves and changes, we explore the relationship between the two. Using the stimulus-organism-response model with our results, we presented a four-stage model: (1) government-imposed movement restrictions, (2) revenge travel, (3) self-imposed movement reduction, and (4) the new normal. The inverse patterns between check-ins and pandemic waves suggested that the self-imposed movement reduction would naturally happen and would be sufficient for a smaller epidemic wave. People may spontaneously be aware of the severity of epidemic situations and take appropriate disease prevention measures to reduce the risks of exposure and infection. In summary, LMAR is more sensitive to the waves and could be adopted to characterize the association between travel willingness and confirmed disease cases.