Association of sightseeing tourists and COVID-19 outbreak: A case study of a hot spring resort
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.51094/jxiv.346Keywords:
COVID-19, hotel visitors, hot spring resort, effective reproduction number, sightseeing tourismAbstract
Background: Long-distance travel for sightseeing, which was believed to have spread the COVID-19 outbreak, was banned until 2022. Nevertheless, no report has described a detailed examination of that belief and policy.
Object: This study was conducted to confirm the effects of long distance travel on infectivity at a hot spring resort.
Method: We used a unique dataset including the daily numbers of visitors at three major hotels in Ibusuki city to evaluate how sightseeing tourism affected the COVID-19 effective reproduction number and newly confirmed patients. Study periods were January 25 through August 31, 2022 for the effective reproduction number and from August 19, 2020 through September 20, 2022 for newly confirmed patients.
Results: Neither measure of infectivity was found to be significantly associated with tourism, as represented by hotel visitors.
Discussion and Conclusion: Estimation results demonstrated that sightseeing tourists might not have affected the COVID-19 outbreak.
Conflicts of Interest Disclosure
No author has any conflict of interest, financial or otherwise, to declare in relation to this study.Downloads *Displays the aggregated results up to the previous day.
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Submitted: 2023-03-31 08:00:42 UTC
Published: 2023-04-04 01:23:56 UTC
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Junko Kurita
Yoshitaro Iwasaki
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