First, the lockdown policy has been adopted at different timings with different degrees of mobility control across nations. 23, 2020, different nations and regions have adopted various lockdown policies to contain the pandemic but with varying outcomes. Since the Chinese city of Wuhan, the first epicenter, adopted a draconian lockdown policy on Jan. Thus, the lockdown policy has exhibited multilevel and multi-dimensional effects on pandemic outcomes, and there is a critical need to assess its differentiated impact in order to adequately address health disparities. Ren, 2020 Gargoum & Gargoum, 2021 Noland, 2021), there are tremendous health disparities within the city despite the same lockdown policy, with poor neighborhoods and disadvantaged groups such as ethnic minorities suffering disproportionately high rates of infection and death ( CDC, 2020, CDC, 2020, CDC, 2020 Chen, Waterman, Krieger, & Krieger, 2020 Thebault et al., 2020 Yancy, 2020). In addition to vast national and regional differences due to different onsets of the pandemic, different government interventions and public health infrastructure (e.g. Touted by some as “the Great Equalizer” ( Mein, 2020), COVID-19 pandemic has exhibited significant health disparities. Bajardi et al., 2011 Charu et al., 2017 Peiris & Guan, 2004 Pyle, 1969 Wang & Taylor, 2016), mobility restrictions adopted to contain COVID-19 pandemic are unprecedented with its worldwide scale and long duration. While it has been adopted as one of the key responses to pandemic threats in history (e.g. From the draconian sealing-off in Wuhan, China, to a nationwide lockdown in Italy, and to piecemeal stay-at-home orders in the U.S., the lockdown has transformed the world beyond recognition. With a novel coronavirus (COVID-19) and before vaccine was available to the public recently, much of the world has adopted the lockdown in various forms as the key measure to control this pandemic yet, its effect on pandemic outcomes remains largely unknown.
Through the lens of mobility, this research advances knowledge of health disparities by focusing on institutional causes for health disparities and the role of the government through intervention policy and public transit system.
Spatial analyses identify clusters where the lockdown policy was not effective and census tracts that share similar pandemic characteristics. Residential profile matters and census tracts with a higher concentration of disadvantaged population, such as Blacks, Hispanics, poor and elderly people, and people with no health insurance, have higher infection and death rates. Census tracts with people spending more time at home have lower infection and death rates, while those with a higher density of transit stations have higher infection and death rates. With a spatial method and multiple sources of data, this research demonstrates the uneven impact of the lockdown policy and public transit system in shaping local pandemic outcomes. Adopting a multilevel conceptual framework, this research investigates how city-level lockdown policy and public transit system shape mobility and thus intra-city health disparities, using New York City as a case study. The world has adopted unprecedented lockdown as the key method to mitigate COVID-19 yet its effect on pandemic outcomes and health disparities remains largely unknown.
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