As lockdown conditions have spread throughout the world in response to the coronavirus pandemic, most citizens have been extremely limited in their movements.  This is emphasized by a new tool developed by researchers at Oxford University, which tracks the movement of people throughout the United Kingdom during the outbreak.

The tool uses anonymized and aggregated mobile phone data to monitor the movement of people, with numerous interactive dashboards aimed to aid decision making among policy makers and other officials involved in tackling the pandemic.

The data produces a number of fascinating findings.  For instance, population movement since the start of March has fallen by 98%, with 55% of people staying at home on Easter Monday.  The pandemic has also coincided with a fall in hospital footfall of a whopping 80%.

The data also revealed that the flow of people between different parts of the UK has fallen by 76%, whilst the best time to visit a supermarket appears to be 9 am on Tuesday morning.

Public data

The dashboards are freely available to the public, and allow people to view specific information about their region, including for particular National Health Service catchment areas.

“The monitoring of population movements in response to the COVID-19 pandemic has received considerable attention following its use in China, South Korea and Singapore, the countries where the virus impacted earliest,” the researchers explain. “The team came together to do what we could to help tackle the challenge facing the UK through the use of ethical big data analytics for the public good.”

They hope that data, such as their own, can be crucial in effectively fighting the coronavirus outbreak, as it can allow measures, such as social distancing, to be applied as effectively as possible, thus saving lives whilst keeping disruption to a minimum.