• Kevin A Brown, Jean-Paul R Soucy, Sarah A Buchan, Shelby L Sturrock, Isha Berry, Nathan M Stall, Peter Jüni, Amir Ghasemi, Nicholas Gibb, Derek R MacFadden, and Nick Daneman.
• Public Health Ontario (Brown, Buchan, Daneman); Dalla Lana School of Public Health (Brown, Soucy, Buchan, Sturrock, Berry), and The Institute for Health Policy, Management, and Evaluation (Stall, Jüni, Daneman), University of Toronto; Applied Health Research Centre, St. Michael's Hospital (Jüni); Sinai Health System and the University Health Network (Stall); Women's College Hospital (Stall); Department of Medicine (Stall, Daneman), University of Toronto, Toronto, Ont.; Communications Research Centre Canada (Ghasemi); Public Health Agency of Canada (Gibb); Ottawa Hospital Research Institute (MacFadden), Ottawa, Ont.; Division of Infectious Diseases (Daneman), Sunnybrook Research Institute, Toronto, Ont. kevin.brown@utoronto.ca nick.daneman@sunnybrook.ca.
• CMAJ. 2021 Apr 26; 193 (17): E592E600E592-E600.

BackgroundNonpharmaceutical interventions remain the primary means of controlling severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) until vaccination coverage is sufficient to achieve herd immunity. We used anonymized smartphone mobility measures to quantify the mobility level needed to control SARS-CoV-2 (i.e., mobility threshold), and the difference relative to the observed mobility level (i.e., mobility gap).MethodsWe conducted a time-series study of the weekly incidence of SARS-CoV-2 in Canada from Mar. 15, 2020, to Mar. 6, 2021. The outcome was weekly growth rate, defined as the ratio of cases in a given week versus the previous week. We evaluated the effects of average time spent outside the home in the previous 3 weeks using a log-normal regression model, accounting for province, week and mean temperature. We calculated the SARS-CoV-2 mobility threshold and gap.ResultsAcross the 51-week study period, a total of 888 751 people were infected with SARS-CoV-2. Each 10% increase in the mobility gap was associated with a 25% increase in the SARS-CoV-2 weekly case growth rate (ratio 1.25, 95% confidence interval 1.20-1.29). Compared to the prepandemic baseline mobility of 100%, the mobility threshold was highest in the summer (69%; interquartile range [IQR] 67%-70%), and dropped to 54% in winter 2021 (IQR 52%-55%); a mobility gap was present in Canada from July 2020 until the last week of December 2020.InterpretationMobility strongly and consistently predicts weekly case growth, and low levels of mobility are needed to control SARS-CoV-2 through spring 2021. Mobility measures from anonymized smartphone data can be used to guide provincial and regional loosening and tightening of physical distancing measures.© 2021 CMA Joule Inc. or its licensors.

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