Japan asked its people to voluntarily make less social contacts to reduce Covid infections. Cell phone location data show they reduced interactions 70%
In a study from The University of Tokyo Institute of Industrial Science, researchers examined location data from more than 200,000 mobile phone users. Using these data, the researchers calculated the human movement in Tokyo before and during the state of emergency. The striking findings were published in Scientific Reports.
"Using anonymized data that represented about 2% of the population, we could compute human movement and contact rates at a 100-meter grid-cell scale," study first author Takahiro Yabe says. "We found that 1 week into the state of emergency, human mobility reduced by 50%, which led to a 70% drop in social contacts." End quote
