Big Shot for the Big Apple -- Can the COVID-19 Vaccine Mobilize the City that Never Sleeps?

The clinical benefits of public health interventions, like COVID-19 vaccines, are largely
documented and understood, but little evidence is available to inform the human behavioral and
economic impacts of these interventions. This analysis utilizes anonymized cellphone and
publicly available COVID-19 data to quantify the impact of COVID-19 health interventions on
geographic mobility in New York City. Mobility is defined as visit and foot traffic totals,
captured through cellphone pings to business and retail locations, aggregated into weekly totals,
from May 2019 – December 2021. The percent change in mobility between time intervals of
interest and a linear regression model inform the results of this analysis. The key findings
suggest that geographic mobility in New York City remains below pre-pandemic levels. In
addition, COVID-19 vaccines do not appear to have a significant impact in increasing
geographic mobility. However, the conclusive impact of COVID-19 vaccines on geographic
mobility cannot be quantified through this analysis alone. Additional analyses should be
conducted to identify alternate factors influencing geographic mobility. These results and
conclusions discussed can provide a new perspective for policymakers and public health officials
to evaluate the non-clinical impacts of public health interventions.