Measuring social behavior changes in Tagaytay City during the COVID-19 pandemic

Abstract

We determine the degree of social distancing between individuals in Tagaytay City (2020 population: 85,330) during the COVID-19 pandemic (16 April 2020 – 5 March 2022) pandemic using a social distancing scale from 0 to 100, derived from the Barabási-Albert network and Fagnan-Abnar-Rabbany-Zaïane community detection algorithm. The interaction dynamics of approximately 20,000 households (average size: 4.34 members per household) is studied where each member is assigned a state based on a modified Susceptible-Exposed-Infected-Recovered compartmental model for epidemiology. We found that social interaction was relatively low during Variant Zero and the Alpha/Beta surges (April 2020 - June 2021), which peaked at a social distancing scale of 2 implying strict compliance of enhanced community quarantine guidelines. For the Delta and Omicron variants that followed, the social distancing scale reached 15 and 20 respectively, which implies greater wariness at resuming pre-pandemic levels of public social interactions relative to government recommendations.