MA Residents Starting To Move, Despite Stay-At-Home Advisory

BOSTON — Americans are starting to move about more freely despite the continuing spread of the new coronavirus, even in states like Massachusetts where stay-at-home orders and advisories are still in place.

Cellphone tracking data compiled by Google in its community mobility reports shows that people are traveling more, especially to grocery stores and pharmacies but above all to parks, now that spring is well advanced.

But as the chart below shows, Americans have increased their travel to all sorts of locations, including retail and recreation locations, transit stations and workplaces.

The trend is also visible in Massachusetts, where a stay-at-home advisory issued March 24 was recently extended to May 18, although other states including neighboring Rhode Island have begun to loosen their restrictions.

The tracking data show that Massachusetts residents have been flocking to parks — no surprise now that spring is half over —and have also started visiting retail and recreation outlets and transit centers. But there has been little change in travel to workplaces since the end of March — a sign that the economy is still on lockdown.

Google arrived at these figures by aggregating location data from cellphones to track the movements of large numbers of people.

The data comes with several important caveats:

• Tracking location does not show how often or how closely people come into contact with each other, and is not necessarily a predictor of infection.
• Rural residents often must travel farther to get groceries or other necessities, while city dwellers don't have to move far to infect others.
• Higher-income residents often are able to comply more easily than low-income residents, whose jobs do not always allow them to work from home.

The methodology of the Google report can be found at the end of this document.