- Click to share on Facebook (Opens in a new window)
- Click to share on Twitter (Opens in a new window)
- Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in a new window)
- Click to email a friend (Opens in a new window)
How to survive home isolation? 2:03
(CNN) - Google is publishing the data it is already collecting on people's movements during the coronavirus pandemic.
The company published a series of "Community Mobility Reports" to show the types of places people visit in 131 countries and regions. The first report was published on April 1 and compares the reduction in mobility between mid-February and the end of March.
Google said in a blog post that it hopes that tracking movement trends over time and by geography can help shape and inform the response of governments and public health officials to the coronavirus pandemic.
The reports, which contain data from two or three days before, aim to detect trends in how people behave and respond to social distancing.
The data is disaggregated by country and then by region, the reports will show whether people are heading to retail and grocery stores, pharmacies, parks, workplaces, and more. It will also show how busy these places were before the pandemic.
- The differences between quarantine, isolation, curfew and social distancing
Latin America
The data from Google is from April 1, 2020 and reflects the mobility of the end of March. At that time, some countries such as Colombia, Chile, Bolivia, Argentina and others had ordered mandatory isolation to prevent the spread of the coronavirus. Mexico and Brazil had not yet declared mandatory confinement for coronavirus as of that date. So far in Brazil, for example, there is no express prohibition for the population to go out. Several governors have ordered the closure of non-essential shops or limited transportation between municipalities, but President Jair Bolsonaro attacks this position, alleging that the country's economy cannot stop.
The United States declared a national coronavirus emergency on March 13, but President Trump has left mandatory quarantine orders to the governors of each state.
For this reason, countries such as Mexico and the United States are some of those that show the least reduction in mobility, compared to others in the region. Italy and Spain, which is also included in this report, are the countries that show the most reduction, since confinement measures began much earlier than in Latin America.
The data
The company said the findings are "created with anonymous, aggregated data sets of users who have turned on location history settings, which is turned off by default" on Google services.
Google added that it would not disclose information that could be used to identify its users, such as individual location or contacts.
"In addition to other resources that public health officials may have, we hope these reports will help support decisions about how to manage the covid-19 pandemic," Google said in a blog post. "This information could help officials understand essential travel changes that can shape business hours recommendations or inform delivery service offerings."
The news comes when a large part of the world population lives under restrictions and blockades to stop the spread of covid-19, which already has more than 1.4 million confirmed cases and has left more than 82,000 deaths worldwide, according to figures. from Johns Hopkins University.
- The White House seeks to stimulate the economy as public health experts call for self-isolation
Criticism of data publication
Google's move to post location data highlights privacy concerns. According to Mark Skilton, director of the Artificial Intelligence Innovation Network at Warwick Business School in the UK, Google's decision to use public data “poses a key conflict between the need for mass surveillance to effectively combat the spread of the coronavirus and the problems of confidentiality, privacy and consent on any data obtained ”.
"The covid-19 is an emergency on such a large scale that, if anonymity is managed properly, Internet giants and social media platforms could play a responsible role in helping to build collective collective intelligence for the social good, instead of making a profit, ”said Skilton.
In March, Google confirmed to CNN that it was exploring ways to use aggregated and anonymous data to aid in the coronavirus effort, as the Washington Post first reported. Facebook (FB) also confirmed at the time that it is working on similar efforts.
covid-19