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Like many countries, the US government-imposed travel restriction policies on selected countries with a high spread of COVID-19 airports to prevent the introduction and spread of COVID-19. Between March 2020 and October 2021, travellers from China, Iran, European Schengen countries, the United Kingdom, Republic of Ireland, Brazil, South Africa and India were restricted with some exceptions. The main objective with this study was to explore the associations between COVID-19 cases and death rates, and the proximity to airports, train stations and time of public transportation. To address the study objective, the authors used the most recent JHU COVID-19 database, the American Community Survey and Airport and Amtrak data from the Bureau of Transportation Statistics from 3,132 US counties. The authors categorised the counties into three groups according to their distance from an airport: less than 25 miles, between 25 and 50 miles and more than 50 miles. The authors then ran negative binomial regressions and Cox regression models, adjusted for population density, population race/ethnicity, travel time, being close to an international airport and the main sources of commutes. The findings showed that the number of airports, the number of train station and the length of commuting time were predictors for the number of deaths and cases in a county. The authors found that counties within 25 miles of an airport had 1.372 times the rate of COVID-19 cases and 1.338 times the rate of COVID-19 deaths compared to the counties that were more than 50 miles from an airport. To prevent the introduction and spread of COVID-19 and any similar pandemic that transfers by air, the timing of the travel restriction policy is a crucial element. Policymakers and officials in transportation and public health should collaborate to promulgate policies and procedures to prevent the spread of airborne infectious diseases.

Since the development of the COVID-19 vaccinations, questions surrounding race have been prominent in the literature on vaccine uptake. Early in the vaccine rollout, public health officials were concerned with the relatively lower rates of uptake among certain racial/ethnic minority groups. We suggest that this may also be patterned by racial/ethnic residential segregation, which previous work has demonstrated to be an important factor for both health and access to health care.

In this study, we examine county-level vaccination rates, racial/ethnic composition, and residential segregation across the U.S. We compile data from several sources, including the American Community Survey (ACS) and Centers for Disease Control (CDC) measured at the county level.

We find that just looking at the associations between racial/ethnic composition and vaccination rates, both percent Black and percent White are significant and negative, meaning that higher percentages of these groups in a county are associated with lower vaccination rates, whereas the opposite is the case for percent Latino. When we factor in segregation, as measured by the index of dissimilarity, the patterns change somewhat. Dissimilarity itself was not significant in the models across all groups, but when interacted with race/ethnic composition, it moderates the association. For both percent Black and percent White, the interaction with the Black-White dissimilarity index is significant and negative, meaning that it deepens the negative association between composition and the vaccination rate.

The analysis is only limited to county-level measures of racial/ethnic composition and vaccination rates, so we are unable to see at the individual-level who is getting vaccinated.

We find that segregation moderates the association between racial/ethnic composition and vaccination rates, suggesting that local race relations in a county helps contextualize the compositional effects of race/ethnicity.

Transport and pandemics are interlinked given the ubiquitous nature of modern transport systems. The COVID-19 pandemic has provided much evidence for both virus contagion but also containment and how transport plays a role in both. As the world and its cities experienced lockdowns, there were travel restrictions, physical social distancing rules, transport systems shut down, changed operations, a re-opening with lower demands in some sectors (e.g., air transport and urban public transport services) and an increased demand in others (e.g., freight and home deliveries). These changes brought about a series of reactions at all levels, from governments and local authorities, operators of all transport modes but also personal and individual behaviour. This volume provides evidence on an array of transport and pandemic experiences through a collection of works from around the world, each chapter discussing a mode, a region and possible future outcomes. This introductory chapter provides the context for this volume with an overview of literature that looks at transport and pandemics, a timeline of events that marked the COVID-19 pandemic developments across different parts of the world, and finally an overview of the chapters in the volume. It concludes with some insights from the editors on the future of transport in a post-COVID world.

This study aimed to examine how Medical Expenditure Panel Survey (MEPS) data have been used to support scientific discoveries in biomedical and health sciences, and provide insight to researchers who are interested in using MEPS regarding collaborations and dissemination of research output.

A bibliometric approach was used to systematically examine the publications that used MEPS data and were indexed by PubMed and Web of Science (WoS). Microsoft Excel and bibliometric tools (WoS and VOSviewer) were utilized for quantitative and bibliometric network analysis. The measures were investigated on the total number of publications by year, research categories, source journals, other datasets/databases co-used with MEPS, funding sources, collaboration patterns, and research topics.

A total of 1,953 eligible publications were included in this study with the numbers growing significantly over time. MEPS data were primarily used in healthcare services, public environmental and occupational health research. The journals that published the most papers using MEPS were all in the healthcare research area. Twenty-four other databases were found to be used along with MEPS. Over 3,200 researchers from 1,074 institutions in 25 countries have contributed to the publications. Research funding was supported from federal, private, local, and international agencies. Three clusters of research topics were identified among 235 key terms extracted from titles and abstracts.

Our results illustrated the broad landscape of the research efforts that MEPS data have supported and substantiated the value of AHRQ's effort of providing MEPS to the public.

THE June conference at Margate is so near that we must needs be pre‐occupied with it at the moment although two months ago we were able to give an anticipatory description of the programme. The protracted and cold winter, culminating in the most “perishing” April of the century, possibly of any century since the Great Ice Age, seems on the threshold of May to have dissolved at last in warmer weather. Margate is a lady in the sun, but perhaps something else under cloud, and wise people take warm clothes when they visit her. We hope, however, that they will not be necessary and that for some hundreds of our readers Margate air will be an invigorating experience.