Tracking mobility of individuals offers clues to finding COVID
This is part of our Coronavirus Update series in which Harvard specialists in epidemiology, infectious disease, economics, politics, and other disciplines offer insights into what the latest developments in the COVID-19 outbreak may bring. Harvard scientists are leading a global research network that is using data from mobile devices and social media to document people’s movements during the COVID-19 outbreak and translate that information to help government officials set pandemic policy worldwide. The effort, called the COVID-19 Mobility Data Network, involves about 60 academic research labs working with officials in the U.S., U.K., Canada, Mexico, India, Bangladesh, The Netherlands, and Colombia, and seeks to fill what organizers see as a gap between potentially useful data that scientists are gathering and policymakers’ need for targeted information as they make pandemic decisions that can affect people’s lives and livelihoods. “When COVID happened and it became clear that the only interventions available to us were social-distancing...