Latest COVID-19 Mobility report for Nepal shows increase in movement

The latest mobility report for Nepal shows an increase in the movement (than last week) which suggests people have started to move a bit. It could be also due to the government not enforcing the lockdown. People mostly followed government guidelines to help reduce the spread of the virus. Last week’s COVID-19 Mobility report from Google also suggests the same with the people’s movement largely limited by the lockdown.

But this week there has been a slight increment in the mobility percentage. We could also feel the movement as we see the number of people and vehicles in the streets, roads.

Google has released the COVID-19 mobility report to understand how people have reacted to social distancing advice. They have released the report of the changes in mobility for the period March first week till now.

On April 17 report, the mobility of people for retail and recreation shown reduction by 79% whereas the April 26 report shows the same movement as reduced by 75%. While the movement for the grocery and pharmacy changes from -66% to -62%.

Here is the comparison of the mobility trend for Nepal taken in the date April 17 and April 26.

Similarly, last week report showed the mobility for workplaces decreased by 69% while the movement for places of residence has increased by 26%. Let’s compare the report for the workplaces and residential mobility in Nepal for April 17 and April 26.

Here are the mobility trends for retail and recreation for some countries as per the same data:

• Mobility for India: – 85% April 17, -86% April 26
• Mobility for Spain: -89% before and -92% now
• Italy mobility: -79% before and -92% now
• US mobility: -45% last week and -42% now
• Germany mobility: -55% last week and -52% now.

Before Nepalese people have limited their mobility in a similar way as the Coronavirus most hit countries. Now the data shows the country is trying to open up like that in the case of Germany. Whereas the mobility of Spain and Italy reduce further by up to 92%.

How did Google calculate the mobility trend?

Google says they used the same process as the popular times in the places of Google Maps. They collect the data from the users who choose to share their location with Google while maintaining the people’s privacy with the anonymization of the data. So, the data does not show any individual’s location or contacts or movement.

In the mobility trend, they have set the baseline for the median of the particular day of the 5 week period from Jan 3 to Feb 6, 2020 (which is before the COVID-19 became pandemic in most parts of the world).

Google also makes it clear that the data is just a sample of the total population as not every people have Android phones. Similarly, all those Android phones also do not opt-in to share their location.

While you limit yourself in your home, we suggest you read the Top 10 productive use of the internet for lockdown >>

There are other mobility reports from sources like Apple and Facebook. Apple reports such mobility report for each day in areas: Countries, states, cities with enough data. Apple does not provide any report for Nepal as we suppose they do not get sufficient data here.