To gauge the degree of social distancing in a country, we summarize data on mobility provided by both Google and Apple. These reports provide people’s frequency of visits and length of stay at categorized places compared to a baseline of ‘normal’ from earlier this year.
The Google COVID-19 Mobility Report provides people’s frequency of visits and length of stay at six categorized places compared to the baseline, which is the median value from January 3 to February 6 this year. We simply averaged the four factors: (1) Retail & Recreation; (2) Transit Stations; (3) Workplaces, and (4) Grocery & Pharmacy to compare the degree of social distancing across 78 economies. This is summarized in the Social Distancing Index. A lower (or higher) value of the index implies more (or less) social distancing. This project is conducted in collaboration with Citi’s Innovation Lab. Meanwhile, there's a caveat for the data. The low penetration rate of smartphones for some frontier EM economies suggests that the data may not be entirely reflective of those economies as a whole.
As of July 10, mobility (seven-day moving average) of Peru, Argentina, Philippines, Colombia, the U.K., India, Mexico and South Africa contracted more than 28%, compared to pre-COVID-19 levels. By sector, mobility in 'grocery & pharmacy (-2%)' normalized, while social distancing continued in 'retail & recreations (-19%)', 'workplaces (-25%)' and ‘transit stations (-28%).
On a week-over-week comparison, social distancing (seven-day moving average) in the global economy shifted to tightening for the first time since mid-April as overall mobility reduced by 1 percentage point (ppt) to -19% . It was mainly driven by a sharp contraction of mobility in the U.S. (-4ppt) amid a continuing surge in new cases and high test positivity rates. Social distancing in Czech Republic, Sweden, Israel, Argentina, South Africa, Japan, and Australia also tightened. Australia recently imposed a regional hard lockdown in the greater Melbourne area. By sector, mobility in 'retail & recreations’, ‘grocery & pharmacy’ and ‘work place’ fell marginally from a week ago.
