Social News
Written by: Chen Jiahui Guo Xiaoqing
2020-09-11 07:45
Last update date: 2020-09-11 07:45
The third wave of the new pneumonia epidemic in Hong Kong has eased recently. The government announced earlier today (11th) to relax social distancing measures, including restrictions on the number of people gathered in public places and the number of people sitting at the same table in restaurants to four.
The most stringent two-person "restriction order" since the epidemic took effect on July 29 lasted for more than a month and was finally relaxed. "Hong Kong 01" used Google "People Flow Trends" data to review the impact of the epidemic for more than half a year. The flow of people.
The long queues of people buying masks outside the pharmacy at the beginning of the year are still vivid, but the flow of people shows that the flow of people in grocery stores and pharmacies did not increase significantly at that time. Instead, the flow of people in mid-to-late July was higher than in the non-epidemic period. 10% is estimated to be related to the fact that people need to purchase food to cook at home under the ban on food.
Comparing the second and third waves of the epidemic, the flow of people in retail and recreational establishments and workplaces has dropped significantly in the later stages. It can be seen that although it was said that people were "anti-epidemic fatigue" after fighting the epidemic for a long time, this wave of epidemic lasted for a long time and affected Broader, it still greatly affects people's desire to go out.
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Grocery stores and pharmacies have more people flow in July than before the epidemic
Google's "People Flow Trend" data uses anonymized data to compare changes in the flow of people before and under the epidemic.
Statistics show that under the epidemic, the flow of people in most places in Hong Kong, including retail and recreational establishments, parks, stations, and work places, has declined, while most citizens have reduced their outings. However, there are two types of places where the flow of people has increased compared to before the epidemic: residences, grocery stores and pharmacy.
People stay at home to fight the epidemic, and of course their stay in residence will increase.
It can be seen from the figure that the flow of people in grocery stores and pharmacies has increased significantly since July, and is even about 10% higher than normal. It is 20% higher on individual days. It is believed that some of them are related to the purchase of anti-epidemic materials by the public and fast food in restaurants. related.
At the beginning of the epidemic, from late January to early February, there was a panic buying of anti-epidemic supplies in the market. However, in addition to buying from pharmacies, citizens also ordered masks and other supplies online. At that time, the flow of grocery stores and pharmacies did not increase significantly.
As of mid-June, there was no obvious trend in the flow of people in grocery stores and pharmacies.
The government then distributed copper core masks and 10 masks per household to the public in early July. At that time, the supply of masks and anti-epidemic materials on the market had returned to normal.
Later, the third wave of the epidemic began, and the flow of people in grocery stores and pharmacies rose sharply. The flow of people on July 20 was 18% higher than the benchmark day. With the reduction of confirmed cases, the current increase in flow has dropped.
The increase in the flow of people in grocery stores and pharmacies is also related to the ban on food in restaurants in the evening market. From July 15th, restaurants will not be able to provide dine-in food after evening hours. Many people need to go to grocery stores (including Markets, supermarkets) purchase ingredients to cook at home.
Pedestrian flow in retail, recreational and work places plummeted during the third wave of the epidemic
The pneumonia epidemic in Hong Kong can be roughly divided into three stages, including the first wave from January to February, the second wave mainly imported from March to April, and the third wave that lasted from July to the present, the most serious .
Although it is pointed out that citizens may experience "anti-epidemic fatigue" in the later stage of the fight against the epidemic, increasing travel and gatherings.
However, it can be seen from the data that the flow of people in retail and recreational places has dropped significantly during the third wave of the epidemic (July 5 to date), which is greater than that during the second wave.
However, during the period from late June to early July before the third wave of the epidemic, the flow of people in retail and recreational establishments in Hong Kong did pick up, but it was still about 10% below the normal level.
After the local epidemic eased for a long time, local infections reappeared in early July, and several large groups of infections later appeared. In just one month, the upper limit of the "restriction order" was reduced from eight to four and then to two. , The flow of people on the street is greatly reduced.
On July 29, the two-person "restriction order" came into effect. On the same day, retail and recreational venues fell to the bottom, halving the normal level.
As for work locations, in the early stage of the third wave of the epidemic, Chief Executive Carrie Lam said on July 13 that he did not plan to implement work from home (WFH) for civil servants on a large scale, but announced within a few days that some civil servants had begun to work from home due to uncontrolled circumstances.
Since most private organizations follow government policies, after civil servants started working from home, many private commercial organizations followed suit. Statistics also show that the flow of people at work sites in late July dropped sharply, and some days (non-public holidays) were even lower than usual by about 30 %, the drop was much larger than during the second wave of the epidemic. This may also be related to the summer vacation and the severity of the epidemic than the previous two waves.
The epidemic has reduced the number of people going out. Many people choose to go outside to breathe fresh air on holidays. The flow of people in the park has declined during the epidemic. Only on certain days such as Easter, Buddha's Birthday, Labor Day and other public holidays, the flow of people in the park is benchmarked The daily high is over 10%.
But similarly, the flow of people in the park during the third wave of the epidemic also dropped sharply until mid-August.
Google "People Flow Trend" data collection method:
Google "People Flow Trend" data is the data collected by Google users when they turn on "Location History" in their accounts. After being aggregated and anonymized, the overall flow trend is obtained to analyze the daily flow of people and changes in stay time from February to the present. .
The daily change will be compared with the baseline value (which can be understood as a normal level not affected by the epidemic), and the baseline value is the median flow of people on the corresponding day from January 3 to February 6, 2020. Simply put, The change on September 9 (Wednesday) will be compared with the median (baseline) of Wednesday (base day).
January 23 is the day when the first confirmed case occurred in Hong Kong. Therefore, the community crowd trend report can examine the comparison between each period and the initial stage of the epidemic.
It should be noted that the above data is only calculated on the whereabouts of the users who opened the "Location History" in the Google account. If the data does not meet the minimum privacy requirements, if the number of people is too small to have a chance to identify the person, the data is not It will be displayed in the report, so the data does not fully represent the actual situation of the public, but it can also be used for reference.
In addition, Apple also uses the anonymous user data of its map application to calculate the driving and walking "movement trends" in various places. From the data, it can be seen that the amount of movement in Hong Kong has been decreasing since the end of January (less than the baseline), and it has reached 4 , May and July and August recorded a significant decline.
Image source: "Apple Maps" mobile trend report
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