Social Justice
Covid-19 Community Mobility Report: Google
- 04 Apr 2020
- 4 min read
Why in News
Google has released ‘COVID-19 Community Mobility Reports’. These reports aim to provide insights into what has changed in response to policies aimed at combating COVID-19.
- The reports cover 131 countries and chart movement trends over time by geography, across different categories of places such as retail and recreation, groceries and pharmacies, parks, transit stations, workplaces, and residential.
- The report comes at a time when communities across the globe are looking at measures such as social distancing as a key action to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic.
- The company said it adopted technical measures to ensure that no individual could be identified through the new reports. The reports have been developed according to the company’s stringent privacy protocols and policies.
- Google is an American search engine company founded in 1998 by Serge Brin and Larry Page. It is a subsidiary of Alphabet Inc.
Finding Related to India
- In the wake of the March 22 'Janata Curfew' and the subsequent ongoing 21-day nationwide lockdown, public movement in India at areas with restaurants, pharmacies, parks and workplaces had declined while movement in residential areas had increased.
- The data is based on the 5-week period Jan 3–Feb 6, 2020 and the first few days of the lockdown period.
- There has been a dip of 77% in mobility trends for places like restaurants, cafes, shopping centres and movie theaters and a 65% drop at grocery markets, food warehouses, farmers’ markets and pharmacies.
- A 57% fall for places like public beaches and gardens, a 71% decline at public transport hubs and a 47% drop for places of work.
- However, the mobility trends in the places of residence category showed an increase of 22%.
- These reports will help support decisions about how to manage the COVID-19 pandemic. For example, the information could help officials understand changes in essential trips that can shape recommendations on business hours or inform delivery service offerings.
Movement Across Other Countries
- Reports compared traffic from Feb 16 to March 29 to retail and recreational venues, train and bus stations, grocery stores and workplaces with a five-week period (Jan 3- Feb 6).
- Italy and Spain, two of the hardest-hit countries, both saw visits to retail and recreation locations such as restaurants and movie theaters fall 94%.
- The United Kingdom, France and Philippines had declines of more than 80%.
- In Japan and Sweden, where authorities have not imposed harsh restrictions, visits to retail and recreation sites fell by roughly only a quarter.
- While in South Korea, which has successfully contained a large outbreak through aggressive testing and contact tracing, the decline was just 19%.
- There were no reports for China and Iran, where Google services are blocked.
