Mining Google and Apple mobility data: temporal anatomy for COVID-19 social distancing

Corentin Cot,Giacomo Cacciapaglia,Francesco Sannino

doi:10.1038/s41598-021-83441-4

Abstract

We employ the Google and Apple mobility data to identify, quantify and classify different degrees of social distancing and characterise their imprint on the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in Europe and in the United States. We identify the period of enacted social distancing via Google and Apple data, independently from the political decisions. Our analysis allows us to classify different shades of social distancing measures for the first wave of the pandemic. We observe a strong decrease in the infection rate occurring two to five weeks after the onset of mobility reduction. A universal time scale emerges, after which social distancing shows its impact. We further provide an actual measure of the impact of social distancing for each region, showing that the effect amounts to a reduction by 20–40% in the infection rate in Europe and 30–70% in the US.

Highlights

We employ the Google and Apple mobility data to identify, quantify and classify different degrees of social distancing and characterise their imprint on the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in Europe and in the United States
Using Google and Apple data, we provide a rationale to identify the timing of the social distancing measure actualisation in each region
We analysed the mobility data released by Google and Apple to quantify the effects of social distancing on the COVID-19 spreading dynamics in Europe and in the United States (US)

Summary

Introduction

We employ the Google and Apple mobility data to identify, quantify and classify different degrees of social distancing and characterise their imprint on the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in Europe and in the United States. We further provide an actual measure of the impact of social distancing for each region, showing that the effect amounts to a reduction by 20–40% in the infection rate in Europe and 30–70% in the US. We do not rely on political decisions, but rather define the timing of the mobility reduction based on the data provided by Apple and Google. As categories we will use “Residential” and “Workplace”, which best describe the change in people’s behaviour after the implementation of social distancing measures with respect to a baseline day The latter is defined, according to Google, as the median value of the 5-week period from the 3rd of January to the 6th of February, 2020, predating the wide spread of the virus in Europe and in the US. Angelo Edificio 6, via Cintia, 80126 Napoli, Italy. 5These authors contributed : Corentin Cot, Giacomo Cacciapaglia and Francesco

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