Local governments across the U.S. have asked residents to practice “social distancing,” which involves staying at home and limiting excursions, to help combat the spread of the new coronavirus.
Data collected from mobile phones reveals how much Americans are complying with these instructions and how much their daily habits have changed. Unacast Inc., a company that collects GPS location information from some 25 million U.S. mobile devices, provided data on the distance people travel each day and the number of nonessential businesses they are visiting, showing how behaviors have changed over time in every U.S. county.
States that have enacted stay-at-home orders have generally seen the greatest reduction in residents’ average daily travel.
The steepest declines in travel have occurred in states such as California, New York and New Jersey, some of the states that enacted the earliest stay-at-home orders. Those states also saw the earliest and most severe outbreaks of the disease.