COVID-19 lockdown mobility data in graphics: Maharashtrians spending 34% more time at home, J&K residents making 27% more visits to parks

Google’s  Community Mobility Reports, its website says, “aim to provide insights into what has changed in response to policies aimed at combating COVID-19”. Accordingly, the country-wise reports track movement trends by geography over the time-frame of the past couple of months. These trends calculate movement to various categories of places such as retail and recreation, groceries and pharmacies, parks, transit stations, workplaces, and residential. When it comes to India, the country by-and-large recorded a drop in percentage of visits to places of retail and recreation, grocery and pharmacy, parks, transit stations and workplaces. While each state and Union Territory recorded an increase (26 percent on average) in time spent at residences, Jammu and Kashmir recorded increases in visits to parks, transit stations and grocery/pharmacy stores. **_Follow all the latest coronavirus updates here_** [caption id=“attachment_8275041” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Representational image. AP[/caption] A note on the data by Google These datasets show how visits and length of stay at different places change compared to a baseline. We calculate these changes using the same kind of aggregated and anonymised data used to show popular times for places in Google Maps. Changes for each day are compared to a baseline value for that day of the week: The baseline is the median value, for the corresponding day of the week, during the five-week period 3 January to 6 February this year. The datasets show trends over several months with the most recent data representing approximately two to three days ago. What data is included in the calculation depends on user settings, connectivity, and whether it meets Google’s privacy threshold. Insights are calculated based on data from users who have opted-in to Location History for their Google Account, so the data represents a sample of users. As with all samples, this may or may not represent the exact behaviour of a wider population.