The Effect of Mobility on Covid-19 Cases
About Data: The data is taken from apple’s Mobility Trend Report. It is based on relative volume of directions requests (on Apple’s device) per country/region, sub-region or city compared to a baseline volume on January 13th, 2020. The data is given in three categories; walking mobility, transit mobility and driving mobility. Only driving mobility data is considered for this study. Close to 800 countries/cities/region are given in data but only 38 is taken for the analysis.
The base (100) of mobility is taken as Jan 13, 2020. Hence the value of all countries/regions for Jan 13 is 100. The value 150 means there is 50% increase in the traffic. The value 50 mean there is 50% decrease in the traffic. In below charts, more the red, more the traffic and more the green lesser the traffic.
WHO (World Health Organization) declared Covid-19 as pandemic on March 11, 2020. Most countries took this seriously and made the decision to restrict its mobility. The red zone (more traffic) and green zone (lesser traffic) is clearly divided by the line (March 11).
The effect of reduced-mobility is obvious on the price on world economy and crude oil. With the reduction in mobility, there is sharp decrease in the crude oil price (WTI crude). Consequently, it slipped to the historic low of USD -36.98 on April 20, 2020. Many oil producing companies are on the verge of bankruptcy.
Covid-19 is prevalent in all parts of the world but action of the countries are not same all over. Looking closely into the below chart, though most countries follow the trend in mobility, a few are different. These countries act proactively and did not wait for the WHO to declare it as pandemic. S Korea, Japan, Singapore and Hong Kong are showing green much before the WHO’s declaration. These countries did not restrict the mobility aggressively. They are not deep green anytime but partially green all the time and more importantly, much before the most countries.
On the other hand there are another set of the countries which are late-starters and aggressive; Italy, Greece, Spain, USA and India. What is common in these five countries? They were showing red initially but suddenly turned to deep green. These countries did not restrict mobility of its people initially then suddenly and aggressively implemented restrictions.
USA behaved differently from other countries, it was mostly red until March 11 and goes partially to thin green. As a country, USA never seems aggressive in the restrictions on mobility.
Most important is to see the relation of Covid-19 growth with mobility. For better comparison, we have taken Italy and S. Korea to see if there is any relationship between Covid-19 growth and mobility. Italy did not implemented lockdown in starting days then aggressively implement lockdown whereas S. Korea controlled the mobility in its earlier days.
When S. Korea was showing its peak with 900+ cases in a day on February 24. Daily growth line chart shows there is not much use of mobility restrictions in later stages to control virus spread. The straight line of Italy’s cases during February month could be incubation period for the upcoming disaster.
This comparative observation is same with the other set of countries like Spain, Germany, US or UK with Japan, Singapore and S. Arabia.
Now, what about India? Is India on the same path as Italy was? What would be the possible numbers? When it will reach the peak?
As of May 7, 2020 there are ~53k cases with maximum one-day growth of 3900 on May 5. A few observations from the below comparative charts can be drawn.
First, both Italy and India made it little late to take measures. There is straight line in both countries in initial days. They took measures when cases start to increase.
Italy shows sharp increase very soon and reach its peak in just 15 days whereas India is yet to reach its peak. It seems India’s deep green delayed the number of cases to rise (not considering other factors like number of testing, temperature, density of population, age of population and so on) but it is likely to happen soon. No predictive study is performed on the possible number of cases in India but once peak is reached, roughly, the same number of case can be added to the tally. If India reaches its peak daily growth at 6000 with 90K total cases then total cases can be 180K.
Interestingly, India is able to maintain strict-restriction on its mobility during last six weeks. Also, India is aiming to test more than 1 lakh a day will surely increase number of cases. Whole world is looking towards this country with more than 1.3 billion population on how things will unfold in the coming future. Has WHO made it late to announce Covid-19 as ‘pandemic’? Perhaps. Not all countries are too pro-active to decide. Most countries are dependent on the guidelines of the World Health Organization to implement health-related policies in its countries. Had WHO announced it two-week before then the world’s picture would have been different from what we see now.
