Tracking Population Movement as States Reopen

With about half of states lifting their shelter-in-place orders and reopening to varying degrees, many Americans are stepping out of quarantine for the first time in weeks. Restaurants are serving in-house diners, storefronts are opening their doors to shoppers, and people are going back to their workplaces, creating scenes of pre-pandemic life and stirring hopes for a return to 'normal.' But without a vaccine, the threat of transmitting Covid-19 still remains, despite policy cues otherwise.

"This is a very, very dangerous time to be changing these policies" says Direct Relief's Andrew Schroeder, who has been using anonymized data to track how people are moving during the pandemic. While the curve has flattened nationally, it has "plateaued at a very high level," he says, and rates of infection continue to climb in previously low-risk areas.

Meanwhile, people have started moving about at significantly higher rates, even in states where restrictions have yet to be lifted, like California. According to Schroeder, this uptick in mobility could have dire consequences."We're seeing this high rate of correlation rate between the mobility rate and the death rate," he says.

In this episode of the podcast, we speak with Schroeder about how people are moving during this new phase of reopening and what it means for the projected course of the Covid-19 pandemic.