Apple website tracking movement of men and women shows dramatic impact of coronavirus
16 April, 2020
Apple has launched a fresh website that shows with striking graphs how the coronavirus pandemic has slammed the brakes on life all over the world.
The tool visualises the movement of folks in a large number of major cities and countries all over the world based on the amount of requests designed for directions on Apple Maps since January 13.
It shows the dramatic drop in the amount of users driving, walking or taking public transit as governments around the world rolled out increasingly stringent containment measures to avoid the spread of the deadly virus.
Apple said Tuesday that the goal of the new website was to help global efforts to try and stop the spread of COVID-19 by giving insights in to the movement of people to governments and health authorities.
Hong Kong and Seoul, among the first places hit by the virus after it emerged in mainland China, saw mobility numbers stop by up to 60 percent from the next half of January.
In the weeks that followed, the disease marched into Europe and THE UNITED STATES, and the Apple data show the serious effect on movement in those regions.
Rome saw an astounding drop in mobility numbers -- more than 90 percent -- starting early March. London followed within a week or two with a plunge in transit figures of practically 90 percent.
NEW YORK, the epicentre of the outbreak in america, saw transit and walking down by more than 80 percent in March as the crisis worsened.
An identical drop was seen in Sydney in March as Australia strengthened its social distancing policies.
In Singapore, mobility figures were reduced however, not significantly since January, but carrying out a surge in cases and a lockdown imposed earlier this month, they plunged.
Apple's website follows the launch earlier this month of an identical movement data tool from Google.
Both projects use anonymised data, the companies have said, as rights activists have raised concerns about the privacy and security of users being compromised in anti-coronavirus projects that involve private information.
Google and Apple also have announced they are teaming up to help authorities trace contacts between people using Bluetooth technology, and also have vowed that privacy and security are "central" to the initiative.
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