Visualising the covid-19 related disruptions to long-distance population mobility in Australia

• Published in: Australian population studies Vol. 5; no. 1; pp. 101 - 104
• Main Authors: Grossman, Irina, Wilson, Tom, Garber, Jonathan, Temple, Jeromey
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Melbourne Australian Population Studies 01-05-2021
• Subjects: COVID-19 (Disease); Ethnic groups; Population; Public health; Social aspects; Social mobility
• ISSN: 2208-8482; 2208-8482
• DOI: 10.37970/aps.v5i1.85

The public health response to mitigate the spread of COVID-19 in Australia involved an entry ban limiting entrance to Australia to its citizens and residents, a travel ban preventing Australians from leaving the country, and a series of state border closures limiting travel within the country (Grattan Institute 2020). The aims of this paper are to document the extent of the downturn in domestic and international air mobility in Australia that was associated with COVID-19. We use aviation statistics as a proxy for long-distance human mobility. Several papers have already been written on COVID-19 impacted mobility using flight data (e.g., Iacus et al. 2020; Garcia-Gasulla et al. 2020; Lau et al. 2020; Suzumura et al. 2020). Our contribution focuses on the Australian context, providing a summary visual representation of the huge changes in both domestic and international mobility trends which have occurred recently.