How the Govt already knows where we've been during lockdown
Phone tracking reflects plunging domestic tourism but also proves the lockdown rebels are few, writes Katie Kenny.
The movements of our mobile phones can reveal how the country’s holiday habits have changed during the coronavirus lockdown.
Data Ventures, a commercial arm of Statistics New Zealand, has been helping the Government understand New Zealanders’ movements and behaviours and what they mean in the country’s fight against Covid-19. Sourced from Spark and Vodafone, the aggregated and anonymised location data shows the number of people per suburb per hour.
Expecting people would feel the itch to move about the country for the long weekend, police conducted more than 500 checkpoints nationally for the Easter weekend. However, the majority of people ‘‘got the message’’, police said.
The cell tower data, adjusted to be representative of the country’s population, supported the theory that most people resisted the temptation to have a normal long weekend.
On Wednesday, the data brokerage published data suggestive of Kiwis’ movements across six categories: retail, transit, residential, tourism, workplace, and recreational.
It compared that data over three periods: Easter 2019, the week before Easter 2020, and Easter 2020 (the country was in lockdown during the latter two periods).
As expected, in all categories, mobility data was dramatically reduced during the lockdown periods.
A typical Easter period for retailers sees spikes in activity on Saturday and Monday. But during the recent long weekend, despite long queues at supermarkets on Saturday morning, there was no increased shopping activity on those days. And shopping flatlined on Good Friday, when stores were closed.
During Easter 2019, large numbers of people headed to recreational areas such as beaches and parks, starting early on Thursday and peaking over the long weekend.
But this year, Data Ventures said, ‘‘the population of recreational areas did not see anything noteworthy’’, suggesting people followed the rules and stayed closed to home.
Data across different regions during Easter 2020, compared with the week prior and Easter 2019, showed a slight overall increase in mobility across the country (6 per cent), and more movement in the North Island than the South Island.
Auckland and Wellington, in particular, saw a 7 per cent increase in movement during Easter weekend compared to the week prior.
‘‘We are not sure if the increase of mobility is due to people taking longer walks, or going to their beach homes,’’ Data Ventures said.
Mobility data in holidaying regions showed a 40 per cent reduction between Easter 2019 and Easter 2020. The West Coast, a popular domestic tourist destination, saw the biggest reduction in travel (nearly 50 per cent).
The population of tourist areas overall has dropped by nearly 70 per cent, Data Ventures said.
Executive director Drew Broadley said he continued to be impressed by the behaviour of New Zealand during lockdown.
‘‘While there’s an increase in mobility, it doesn’t feel like the reports about people ignoring directions of staying at home are a fair representation of how the majority of us continue to respect each other’s bubbles.’’
Police said breaches of either the Civil Defence Emergency Management Act or the Health Act increased by 106 per cent over the time period.
Between 6pm Thursday and 9pm Sunday, police took enforcement action against 622 people – 64 were prosecuted and there were 15 youth referrals.
Nationally, there have been 1205 recorded breaches of lockdown rules, 138 prosecutions and 1038 warnings since the start of alert level 4.