AUSTIN, Texas – You know that section on Google Maps that shows you how busy a business may be during certain hours or how sometimes when you go look up directions, the app will ask you if you want to go back to a place you’ve already been?

  • Google data proving insight on how much less users are traveling to certain locations
  • Data collected anonymously from Google users that opt-in to “Location History”
  • Goal is to provide health officials details on if people are traveling and where they’re going

Google gathers and gives you these suggestions based on data collected anonymously from your phone’s location history combined with the data from millions of other devices. Now it's using that data to show how habits are changing with the implementation of social distancing across the world in an attempt to slow the spread of COVID-19.

The COVID-19 Community Mobility Reports looks at how often users are traveling to categories of places: retail and recreation, grocery and pharmacy, parks, transit stations, workplace, and residential.

Google officials said in a blog post they hope the information can be useful to public health officials as they’re making decisions regarding COVID-19.

Six charts from the U.S. COVID-19 Community Mobility Report for the state of Texas. (Google)

The data is calculated using the same algorithms Google uses to show “popular times” for places on Google Maps.

For these reports, the company says they only use data from users that have opted in to “Location History” on their Google accounts, and also meet their privacy threshold.

That means populations that either don’t have Google accounts and haven’t opted in are not counted in the reports. Additionally, locations that are not busy enough to meet their standards aren’t counted in order to protect the privacy of users.

Based on just the information provided by Google, it’s unclear how many people are being counted in the reports for a given geographic area.

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Across the state of Texas, the reports show a decline starting the week of March 8 for the percentage of users traveling to all datasets other than residential areas. That’s compared to how often these users were traveling to these locations between January 3 and February 6.

By March 29, the last date available in the reports, there was a greater than 40 percent decrease in the number of Texans going to retail and recreation locations, and transit stations. There was only a 36 percent decrease in the number of users going to a workplace.

Six charts from the Texas COVID-19 Community Mobility Report for Bexar County. (Google)

Bexar County users saw decreases similar to state numbers for the number of users going to retail and recreation locations, and transit stations. However, the county did see a 46 percent drop in the number of users going to parks by March 29.  

Six charts from the Texas COVID-19 Community Mobility Report for Travis County. (Google)

In Travis County, the Google data shows a more substantial decrease compared to state numbers— a 54 percent decrease for how many users were traveling to retail and recreation locations, and a 72 percent decrease in the number of users going to transit stations.

If you’d like to see the data for your area, click here.

Officials with both the cities of Austin and San Antonio say they are using Google data along with other research on how people are moving within the cities.

San Antonio Health officials say they specifically have been looking at the key categories of retail and recreation, grocery and pharmacy, workplace, and residential comparing Bexar County with four other large Texas counties.

In an email, a representative for the department said: “This would be more useful to us if we had access to daily updates, other comparable counties than Texas, and could see it at a more granular level like census tract in order to understand behaviors within the county and city.”

On Monday, the University of Texas at Austin released a revised report analyzing how much of the population in the Austin-Round Rock region would have to adhere to social distancing guidelines in order to adequately decrease the demand on the local health care system. Earlier versions of the same report were part of the decision to issue a shelter-in-place order for the City of Austin.

The updates show that the epidemic growth rate is higher than they had assumed in the March report but that school closures and social distancing so far are reducing the transmission rate.

The UT reports indicate that even reducing social contact by 50 to 75 percent could still leave Austin-area hospitals overwhelmed by the summer. In order to prevent that, Austin-Round Rock area residents may have to reduce social contact by as much as 90-95 percent.