Google has unveiled the COVID-19 Community Mobility Reports in an effort to help public health officials understand how people are moving about in response to the coronavirus pandemic. The reports show location data from folks who have agreed to share their location history with Google in order to show places that are following instructions to shelter in place or not.
“As global communities respond to the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been an increasing emphasis on public health strategies, like social distancing measures, to slow the rate of transmission,” wrote Google Geo SVP Jen Fitzpatrick. “In Google Maps, we use aggregated, anonymized data showing how busy certain types of places are helping identify when a local business tends to be the most crowded. We have heard from public health officials that this same type of aggregated, anonymized data could be helpful as they make critical decisions to combat COVID-19.”
The reports are available to all users in 131 countries, and in some regions, you can search for regional state and county data. Once a region is selected, Google will generate the report in a PDF form that’s easy to share with workers in the field, the company said.
The reports cover six categories, including retail and recreation (restaurants, museums, shopping centers, etc.), grocery and pharmacy, parks (including beaches, marinas, etc.), transit stations, workplaces and residences.
While the reports are designed primarily to help public health officials, anyone can access them by selecting a country and downloading the PDF.
In New York, which has been hit particularly hard by Covid-19, movement to retail and recreation is down 62 percent, while transit station mobility is down 68 percent.
We heard earlier this month that the US government could work with tech firms to track the spread of Covid-19 using phone location data, and it was later revealed that this movement would be tracked using data collected from mobile ads. We’ve also heard that controversial firm NSO Group is making spyware that tracks and predicts the spread of the virus. Governments from several other countries, including India, Taiwan, and Singapore, are also using location data to monitor novel coronavirus infections.
