AccScience Publishing / IJPS / Online First / DOI: 10.36922/ijps.357
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RESEARCH ARTICLE

Use of migration and mobility data in COVID-19 response: Evidence from the East Africa Community region

Mary Kalerwa Muyonga1*
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1 Population Studies and Research Institute, University of Nairobi, Nairobi, Kenya
IJPS 2024, 10(1), 108–119; https://doi.org/10.36922/ijps.357
Submitted: 19 September 2022 | Accepted: 1 December 2023 | Published: 28 December 2023
© 2023 by the Author(s). This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License ( https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ )
Abstract

COVID-19 pandemic has given rise to unprecedented challenges to global health and mobility. A valuable lesson from this recent pandemic is that migration statistics can be relied on to illuminate the spread of an epidemic and model diffusion patterns once a highly contagious virus is detected in a country. This study reviews literature published between 2020 and 2021, giving insights into the generation and use of migration and mobility data in COVID-19 response in the East Africa Community (EAC). The reviewed studies regarding the EAC Regional COVID-19 Response Plan all point to the need for timely data, but do not specify requirements for mobility and migration statistics. Several studies featured in this review propounded innovative ways to obtain and use the data in COVID-19 modeling. The study concludes that there is potential for use of migration statistics in future pandemic response plans and recommends that the EAC mainstreams migration statistics within the pandemic response processes.

Keywords
COVID-19
Migration
Mobility
Data
East Africa Community
Africa
Funding
None.
Conflict of interest
The author declares that they have no competing interests.
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International Journal of Population Studies, Electronic ISSN: 2424-8606 Print ISSN: 2424-8150, Published by AccScience Publishing