BACKGROUND: To stop the spread of the new coronavirus disease in 2019 (COVID-19), many countries had completely locked down. This lockdown restricted the everyday life of the affected residents and changed their mobility pattern, but its effects on sleep pattern were largely unknown. METHODS: Here, utilizing one of the largest crowdsourced database (Sleep as Android), we analyzed the sleep pattern of 25 217 users with 1 352 513 sleep records between 1 January and 29 April 2020 in the US and 16 European countries (Germany, UK, Spain, France, Italy, The Netherlands, Belgium, Hungary, Denmark, Finland, Norway, Czech, Sweden, Austria, Poland and Switzerland) with more than 100 records in all days of 2020. RESULTS: During the COVID-19 pandemic, the sleeping pattern before and after the country-level lockdown largely differed. The subjects increased their sleep duration by an average of 11.3 to 18.6 min on weekday nights, except Denmark (4.9 min) and Finland (7.1 min). In addition, subjects form all 16 European countries delayed their sleep onset from 10.7 min (Sweden) to 29.6 min (Austria). CONCLUSION: During the COVID-19 pandemic, residents in the US and 16 European countries delayed their bedtime and slept longer than usual.

• MeSH
• Smartphone MeSH
• COVID-19 complications   epidemiology   psychology   MeSH
• Crowdsourcing * MeSH
• Adult MeSH
• Mental Health * MeSH
• Disease Outbreaks prevention & control   MeSH
• Quarantine psychology   MeSH
• Communicable Disease Control MeSH
• Humans MeSH
• Adolescent MeSH
• Pandemics MeSH
• Sleep Wake Disorders epidemiology   MeSH
• SARS-CoV-2 * MeSH
• Aged, 80 and over MeSH
• Aged MeSH
• Sleep physiology   MeSH
• Check Tag
• Adult MeSH
• Humans MeSH
• Adolescent MeSH
• Male MeSH
• Aged, 80 and over MeSH
• Aged MeSH
• Publication type
• Journal Article MeSH
• Geographicals
• Europe MeSH

The Chinese Government quarantined Wuhan on 23 January 2020 and thereafter the Hubei province, affecting a total of 59 million citizens, to cease the spread of the coronavirus disease in 2019 (COVID-19). The effects of this lockdown on the psychological and mental health of both the affected and unaffected Chinese are largely unknown currently. We utilized one of the largest crowdsourced databases (Sleep as Android) that consisted of 15,681 sleep records from 563 users in China to estimate the change in the sleep pattern of Chinese users during the span of 30 December 2019 to 8 March 2020 with reference to 64,378 sleep records of 1,628 users for the same calendar period of years 2011-2019. The sleep pattern in China changed drastically after 23 January 2020 when the law of quarantine and suspension of Wuhan became effective. The two major findings are: (1) Chinese people increased their sleep duration by an average of 20 min and delayed their sleep onset by an average of 30 min at weekdays, while they maintained a similar sleep duration at weekends, and (2) larger changes were found in several subgroups, including those in Wuhan (80 sleep records from 3 users), female subjects, and those aged ≤ 24 years. Overall, Chinese people slept later and longer than usual during the COVID-19 pandemic quarantine.

• MeSH
• Wakefulness * MeSH
• Betacoronavirus metabolism   MeSH
• Smartphone MeSH
• Circadian Rhythm physiology   MeSH
• COVID-19 MeSH
• Crowdsourcing * MeSH
• Mental Health MeSH
• Disease Outbreaks MeSH
• Quarantine psychology   MeSH
• Coronavirus Infections physiopathology   virology   MeSH
• Humans MeSH
• Pandemics MeSH
• Sleep Wake Disorders epidemiology   MeSH
• SARS-CoV-2 MeSH
• Sleep physiology   MeSH
• Pneumonia, Viral physiopathology   virology   MeSH
• Check Tag
• Humans MeSH
• Publication type
• Journal Article MeSH
• Geographicals
• China MeSH

INTRODUCTION: Personal well-being, including people's sleep characteristics, is affected by a variety of factors, one example of which is wide-ranging high-impact public events. In this study, we use a large sleep database obtained through a smartphone application for sleep tracking via anonymized time-sampled data to study the effect of two political events with a wide-ranging impact on people's sleep characteristics: the Brexit referendum in June 2016, and the presidential election of Donald Trump in November 2016 METHOD: Using Sleep as Android - an actigraphy-based sleep monitoring smartphone application - we collected 10.5 million geo-located sleep records from more than 69,000 users in Europe and North America. Population-based changes in sleep around each of these two events, in the United Kingdom and in the United States of America, were assessed using a non-parametric bootstrap test RESULTS: The analysis revealed a significant reduction by 16 min and 21 s in the mean sleep duration of British people in the night after the Brexit poll (p < 0.001). Similarly, the analysis of the US presidential election revealed a significant 12 min 49 s drop in the mean sleep duration during the night following the event, in comparison with the whole studied region (p < 0.001), and an increase by 5 min and 9 s in the subsequent night (p = 0.0328). Additional analysis comparing the election night to comparable days in preceding years revealed that the actual reduction in sleep length may have been even greater. There is also an increase in the proportion of subjects with very short sleep CONCLUSIONS: The results demonstrate a significant impact of two specific major political events on population sleep characteristics. Our results further underline the potential of mobile applications and informatics approaches in general to provide data that enable us to investigate fundamental physiological variables over time and location.

• MeSH
• Accelerometry MeSH
• Humans MeSH
• Mobile Applications MeSH
• Politics * MeSH
• Sleep * MeSH
• Check Tag
• Humans MeSH
• Publication type
• Journal Article MeSH
• Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't MeSH
• Geographicals
• United Kingdom MeSH
• United States MeSH

• MeSH
• Medical Informatics MeSH
• Telemedicine MeSH
• Publication type
• Congress MeSH
• Collected Work MeSH

• Conspectus
• Veřejné zdraví a hygiena
• NML Fields
• lékařská informatika