Google’s New Tool Shows How Well People In Your City Are Following Lockdown

In India, the lockdown which started on 25 March midnight would now continue to be in place until 3 May. During this lockdown, people have been asked to be at their home, and not to leave homes except for emergency purposes. But in reality, a lot of people are still roaming outside for different reasons, putting themselves and the people around them in danger. Well, there’s now a way to check if the people around you are taking the lockdown seriously.

Google’s new tool ‘COVID-19 Mobility’ shows how well the people in your city have been following the lockdown. It uses data from Google’s very popular app Google Maps and Android devices to track people. There are billions of people using Google Maps and android phones which make the data quite reliable. The tool gives you a graph of people’s movement in the area where you had searched by country, regions or city. You’ll be able to check things like the percentage of mobility increased or decreased in the particular region. You can see the changes in mobility in areas like retail stores, parks, workplaces, and more.  You might not see real-time changes to the data, as the data in the tool updated every 2-3 days. It’s also possible that you may not find some particular city or place on the list, but surely it’ll get updated in the coming days.

On Tuesday, Apple has also developed a similar tool which shows mobility changes. But as it uses data from Apple Maps, it might not really be that effective in India as the percentage of people using Apple Maps here is very low.  The tool is aimed to help governments fight the spread of the virus by providing insights into the volume of people’s mobility while walking, driving or taking public transit.