Google report: Romanians have massively cut down their trips to the mall or walks in the park, but increased going out in the neighborhood

Google is to publicly track people’s movements over the course of the coronavirus pandemic and will release data for at least 130 countries, Romania included.

“Google Maps could be helpful as they make critical decisions to combat COVID-19.These Community Mobility Reports aim to provide insights into what has changed in response to policies aimed at combating COVID-19. The reports chart movement trends over time by geography, across different categories of places such as retail and recreation, groceries and pharmacies, parks, transit stations, workplaces, and residential,” Google explained its research, while pledging total confidentiality on the people’s personal data.

The readings are based on location data gathered via the Google Maps app or one of the firm’s other mobile services.

“Google prepared this report to help you and public health officials understand responses to social distancing guidance related to COVID-19. This report shouldn’t be used for medical diagnostic, prognostic, or treatment purposes. It also isn’t intended to be used for guidance on personal travel plans.
Location accuracy and the understanding of categorized places varies from region to region, so we don’t recommend using this data to compare changes between countries, or between regions with different characteristics (e.g. rural versus urban areas)”.

Findings reveal how busy the following types of places are compared to a period earlier in the year before lockdowns were introduced:

• retail and recreation
• grocery and pharmacy
• parks, beaches and plazas
• bus, subway and train stations
• office buildings and other places of work
• residential

The figures for Romania show that

• retail and recreation sites were 81% down
• grocery and pharmacies were 53% down
• parks were 60% down
• transit stations were 72% down
• workplaces were 39% down
• places of residence were 15% higher

In Bucharest’s case, data are as following:

• Retail & recreation -85% compared to baseline
• Grocery & pharmacy -50% compared to baseline
• Parks -86% compared to baseline
• Transit stations -74% compared to baseline
• Workplace -45% compared to baseline
• Residential +18% compared to baseline

Read reports for each of the 131 states surveyed here.