📈📲🚘 As Ontario moves toward re-opening, and more forms of mobility become safer/legal, experts say cellphone mobility data will continue to be a valuable tool in tracking and modelling COVID-19 transmission. [1/11]
https://twitter.com/TheAgenda/status/1402751106124369922
Niagara's acting MoH @MustafaHirji says his team uses mobility data to see where people are going and where they're travelling to the region from. Niagara uses public data from Apple (shown here for Ontario) and Google, as well as private info from Environics Analytics. [2/11] 
Knowing where people are coming from is particularly important for Niagara, Hirji says, because it must balance its economic reliance on tourism with the risk of COVID-19 variants. He has consistently highlighted the risk posed by travellers (tvo.org/article/travel…). [3/11]
In Niagara, recent Google mobility data (attached), shows shopping and recreation have increased. Hirji suggests that may be less concerning now than it would have been several months ago, since more people are likely outside where it's harder to contract the virus. [4/11]
#HamOnt public health has hired forecasting company Scarsin to model COVID-19 transmission using inputs including mobility data. CEO Paul Minshull agrees it's important to consider factors like warm weather when evaluating trends like increasing mobility. [5/11]
Yet despite warmer weather making going out safer, Minshull says mobility will continue to be the top input Scarsin uses for modelling.
This is because, as epidemiologist @FurnessColin points out, it's the one thing that tracks really closely to transmission. [6/11]
This is because, as epidemiologist @FurnessColin points out, it's the one thing that tracks really closely to transmission. [6/11]
"What it really says is overall — and it's not surprising, because this is how communicable disease works — the more mobility means the more contact and exposure; the more contact exposure means greater transmission," Furness says. [7/11]
Furness notes that despite this, mobility data has a strict limitation: “It says nothing about safety.” For example, he says, mobility goes up when schools open, along with transmission, but that data can't tell you how or if COVID-19 is being transmitted in schools. [8/11]
Minshull says that after mobility, vaccination rates likely follow in terms of importance for modelling. “As more and more people get vaccinated, particularly fully, it becomes more acceptable for them to congregate together and not even necessarily have to wear a mask." [9/11]
But he and Hirji both note that contagious variants could bring cases back up quickly if people aren't careful. While Hirji says it might be safe to go to a beach in Niagara this summer, he says it'll still be a problem if that beach gets to crowded for distancing. [10/ 11]
Furness says vaccines make you COVID-resistant in the way a watch may be water-resistant. Swim a bit, and you'll be OK, but go diving and the watch will break. [11/11]
Read more here:
tvo.org/article/what-m…
Read more here:
tvo.org/article/what-m…
PS: A couple commenters on this asked why cases are going down while mobility (to some sectors) is going up. To clarify: the experts say mobility is linked to transmission, but as more people get vaccinated, transmission will go down. Still, variants could bring numbers back up.
PPS: Hamilton public health put it concisely in an emailed statement: "Mobility is really an indicator of changing opportunities (increasing or decreasing) for people to become infected by being exposed to an infected individual."
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