Google: 70% drop in recreation activity in TT

Community mobility reports from Google are now available online. The mega-search engine is releasing data, available for countries around the world, that shows how businesses, groceries, pharmacies and other places of interest have been affected by the covid19 pandemic.

The report on TT shows since the stay-at-home order came into force on March 27, visits to places such as restaurants, shopping centres and cinemas have dropped 70 per cent from the baseline (normal activity).

The report covers the period February 29 to April 11, using graphs to show “mobility trends.” While the beginning of March saw recreational activity slowly declining, the graph shows a particularly sharp drop in activity at the end of March, likely when the stay-at-home order came into effect.

Other activity trends measured in the report show a 32 per cent decrease in visits to essential businesses such as groceries and pharmacies.

Activities for essential businesses seemed steady around the baseline until the end of March, when there was another drastic decrease.

Beaches and “national parks” show a decrease of 63 per cent. The graph shows a steady decrease at these locations from the beginning of March, well before the stay-at-home order came into effect.

Public transport trends also show a 77 per cent decrease and workplaces a 53 per cent decrease.

The only activity trend increase reflected on the report since March is in residential areas, at 22 per cent.

Since the stay-at-home order, there has been a heavy police presence at beaches and more recently, roadblocks throughout the country to ensure people adhere to the rules.

The reports were designed to use “the same type of aggregated, anonymized insights (used) in products such as Google Maps” to help make “critical decisions to combat covid19.” They show the changes in different region due to policies put in place by the respective governments to combat the virus.

Reports for each country are broken down by location to reflect changes in visits to places such as parks and groceries.

The report says they were “developed to be helpful while adhering to stringent privacy protocols and protecting people’s privacy (and) no personally identifiable information, such as an individual’s location, contacts or movement, will be made available at any point.”

Google says it will offer the reports for a limited time, so long as “public health officials find them useful in their work to stop the spread of covid19.”