Rapid surveillance of New York City healthcare center egress behaviors during the 2020 COVID-19 lockdown

This rapid response surveillance project was funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) to collect perishable data on egress behaviors and neighborhood conditions surrounding healthcare centers (HCCs) in New York City (NYC) during the initial NYC COVID-19 PAUSE ordinance from March 22nd to May 19th, 2020. Anonymized data on NYC HCC egress behaviors were collected by observational field workers using phone-based mapping applications. Each egress trip record includes the day of week, time of day, destination category type, along with an array of behavioral outcome categories, ambient weather conditions and socio-economic factors. Egress trajectories with precise estimates of distance traveled and the spatial dispersion or spread around each HCC were added via post-processing. The data collection and cleaning process resulted in 5,030 individual egress records from 18 facilities over a 9-week period.

Automated summary

This rapid response surveillance project aimed to collect real-time data on egress behaviors and neighborhood conditions surrounding healthcare centers in New York City. Observational field workers collected anonymous data on egress behaviors using phone-based mapping applications and added precise estimates of distance traveled and spatial dispersion. The final dataset included 5,030 individual egress records from 18 facilities.