Covid-19 lockdowns and the number of deaths in an area were the strongest influences on travel patterns during the pandemic, according to location data gathered from 837,000 people in the US over nine months.
Using data from a measurement app called Cuebiq, which tracked users using the global positioning system (GPS) signal on their phone for 16 hours a day between January and September 2020, at the Fondazione Bruno Kessler in Italy and his colleagues in Italy and the US analysed people鈥檚 movements around four US states: Arizona, Oklahoma, Kentucky and New York.
The GPS data tailed individuals to within 22 metres of their real location as they travelled. The team recorded stops as someone staying within 65 metres of one location for at least 5 minutes.
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The group analysed how mobility changed during the early stages of the pandemic at an individual level, and how people responded to the imposition and lifting of interventions such as local or state-wide lockdowns.
Unsurprisingly, when lockdowns were introduced, people stayed away from places such as shops. New York鈥檚 non-essential shops 鈥� stores that aren鈥檛 groceries or pharmacies, for example 鈥� saw a 67 per cent drop in the number of visits recorded shortly after state governor Andrew Cuomo introduced a stay-at-home order on 22 March. This was nearly twice the drop in visits recorded by supermarkets, which saw a 38 per cent drop.
When people did go out, they lingered less. People spent an average of 27 per cent less time in New York shops during the stay-at-home directive put in place between 9 May and 23 May. Over time, people began to stay longer and make more visits out of their homes, but the numbers didn鈥檛 return to pre-pandemic levels during the study period.
鈥淧eople were trying to reduce the number of contacts they made,鈥� says Lucchini. 鈥淭hey鈥檙e aware of the risk they鈥檙e taking, and trying to reduce it by following another approach.鈥�
鈥淯nderstanding how risk tolerance changes and how that influences human behaviour and disease transmission is such an important question, and one that is so difficult to answer,鈥� says at the University of Toronto, Canada. 鈥淭he use of mobile phone data in this way provides a chance to start to unpack this.鈥�
There were regional differences: New Yorkers limited their exposure to others more than residents of the three other states surveyed. 鈥淧eople are adapting differently on different levels,鈥� says Lucchini.
In the year since the study ended, vaccines have changed the risk calculation many people make. However, the team is unable to update the analysis. 鈥淲e have data until September 2020, and then Cuebiq changed the way they share their data, so all the technology we built doesn鈥檛 work anymore,鈥� says Simone Centellegher at the Bruno Kessler Foundation in Italy, a co-author on the study.
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