Fresno County residents are staying home more — but how much? Here’s what your phone says
Fresno County and much of California have been under shelter-in-place orders for two months with the goal of preventing the spread of COVID-19, the respiratory disease caused by the coronavirus.
The closures of many retailers, restaurants and businesses deemed non-essential, shuttering of offices and workplaces, and other limitations have not only meant a significant increase in how much time people in Fresno County are spending at home, but also dramatic drops in people venturing out for normal activities.
While individual habits may vary, just how much our collective routines as a community have changed can be estimated, thanks to devices that nearly everyone has in their pocket and purse: smartphones.
Our phones have the capability of tracking where we travel, where and when we move and how much time we spend when we get there..
Internet search and data giant Google is compiling “community mobility reports” that offer snapshots of how daily routines have been affected by the coronavirus pandemic.
Those reports reflect sharp declines in trips to retail stores, restaurants and recreation places, workplaces, grocery stores and pharmacies, and parks — in contrast to life before the coronavirus pandemic.
What does Fresno County’s data show?
The data for Fresno County, for example, shows that on average, traffic to retail and recreation, and to workplaces, was down almost 40% — a slide that began immediately after Fresno County and the city of Fresno declared local health emergencies.
Grocery stores and pharmacies, on the other hand, saw an initial spike of 23% to 33% more trips for a couple of days as people stocked up on a wide range of basic household needs after Fresno Mayor Lee Brand issued shelter-in-place orders for the city.
After those first few days, however, that sector also settled into a malaise that averaged about 8% fewer trips before starting to rebound into increased traffic a couple of weeks ago.
Trips to parks are off by about 35% from normal.
While trips out of the house are way down, the duration for which people are staying home is up by about 14% overall, and by 15% on average on weekdays compared to the pre-COVID-19 lockdown.
But the data shows the average Fresno County resident is spending less time at home on weekends, compared to weekdays.
On weekends, the time spent homebound is an average of 10% higher than normal, which 5 percentage points lowers than the stay-at-home rate on weekdays. That’s an indicator that at least some people are venturing out on the weekends, especially the past two weekends when the Valley has experienced pleasant weather.
Over the same time period since mid-March, California residents overall have generally cut back on trips out, and stayed home for longer, than people in Fresno County.
Statewide, trips to retail and recreation-oriented businesses are off 46%, by 14% to grocers and pharmacies, and by 46% to workplaces. Time spent at home is up by an average of more than 19%, about five percentage points higher than in Fresno County.
The reports intend to “provide insights into what has changed in response to work from home, shelter in place, and other policies aimed at flattening the curve of this pandemic,” according to a Google blog post by Jen Fitzpatrick, senior vice president of Google Geo, and Dr. Karen DeSalvo, chief health officer for Google Health.
“The reports use aggregated, anonymized data to chart movement trends over time by geography, across different high-level categories of places such as retail and recreation, groceries and pharmacies, parks, transit stations, workplaces, and residential.”
This story was originally published May 17, 2020 at 9:00 AM.
