Human Travelling and COVID-19 Pandemic

Suebsarn  Ruksakulpiwat; Wendie  Zhou; Chantira  Chiaranai; Jane E.  Vonck

doi:10.33192/Smj.2021.73

Authors

Suebsarn Ruksakulpiwat Department of Medical Nursing, Faculty of Nursing, Mahidol University, Bangkok 10700, Thailand
Wendie Zhou The Second Affiliated Hospital of Harbin Medical University, Harbin, China.
Chantira Chiaranai Institute of Nursing, Suranaree University of Technology, Nakhonratchasima, Thailand.
Jane E. Vonck The University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI 53715 United States

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.33192/Smj.2021.73

Keywords:

Environment, travel, , COVID-19, nationwide

Abstract

Objective: To determine whether there is a relationship between the extent of human travel and the number of COVID-19 cases in Thailand.
Materials and Methods: The data set on monthly COVID-19 in Thailand between January and July 2020 were retrieved from the Ministry of Public Health, Thailand. Data regarding people’s travel in Thailand during the COVID-19 pandemic and for the same period of 2019 were retrieved from Open Government Data of Thailand. A paired t-test was used to compare the differences between the number of journeys made in each mode of transport in 2019 (January - July) and 2020 (January - July). Pearson’s product-moment correlation coefficient was used to examine the relationships among studied variables.
Results: A Paired Samples t-test showed that from January until July 2020, the number of journeys made by public buses, ships, and airplanes declined by more than 50% from the previous year (p < 0.05). Pearson correlation coefficients showed that the mean monthly number of COVID-19 cases was significantly and inversely correlated with the number of public bus journeys made (r = -0.897, p < 0.01), the number of train journeys (r = -0.834, p < 0.05), ship journeys (r = -0.890, p < 0.01), and airplane journeys (r = -0.911, p < 0.01). There was no significant relationship between the number of COVID-19 cases and private car journeys (r = -0.405, p = 0.367).
Conclusion: During the pandemic, the number of journeys has been decreased. Moreover, the correlation between the number of journeys and COVID-19 cases has been shown in our analysis.

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