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COVID-19 mobility data highlights disparities in rural NC counties

North Carolina public health experts are employing cellphone location data to help model the spread of the novel coronavirus. The data show a massive drop in travel since guidance to stay at home spread widely in March.

Posted Updated

By
Tyler Dukes
, WRAL investigative reporter
RALEIGH, N.C. — North Carolina public health experts are employing cellphone location data to help model the spread of the novel coronavirus across the state.
Projections revealed earlier this week from a team of epidemiologists and academics show the pandemic has a greater chance of outstripping the state's hospital capacity if aggressive social distancing policies aren't left in place.
Among the inputs to that model: Data from the analytics firm Decartes Labs measuring how much people across the state are traveling on a daily basis.

Kimberly Powers is an associate epidemiology professor at the UNC Gillings School of Public Health and one of the collaborators on the modeling announced Monday. Using the aggregated, anonymized data tracking changes in movement, she said the team is able to make reasonable assumptions about how people are coming into contact with each other.

"Those rates of contact are a pretty essential ingredient in predicting what will happen in terms of spread of the infection throughout the population," Powers said.

Compared to a baseline in early March – before the pandemic began its rapid spread in the state – North Carolina counties have seen a precipitous drop in distances traveled, a WRAL News analysis shows.

On average, the Descartes Labs data show movement in the state through April 4 has dropped to about one-third of the distance traveled in the first week of March. That's a reflection of national and local guidance to stay at home whenever possible.

The drop has been less pronounced in rural counties than urban ones, where residents on average have reduced their travel by almost 75 percent.

But the discrepancy alone doesn't tell the full story of what's happening in rural counties, says Richard Hart, with the nonprofit MDC.

"That doesn't necessarily mean that people don't want to, don't know to, social distance," Hart said. "But it may very well mean they're not in a position to be able to do it."

Hart's Durham-based organization has long been focused on advancing economic equity in the South. He says the differences in physical mobility we see in rural and urban counties is closely tied to longstanding economic disparity between the regions.

"If you have a service job that you have to go to, if you need to drive 20 miles to take care of a relative or a friend, those are going to show up in these numbers," Hart said. "And the fact is that places that lack economic mobility are at a disadvantage just in terms of being able to stay home and get groceries delivered."

Hart says these disparities have been highlighted by the pandemic – and the mobility data is just one indicator.

There's still a lot about the virus and its impacts researchers don't know, especially what these differences in social distancing will mean for rural communities compared to urban ones.

"There are a lot of models being developed fast and furious to predict the future of this epidemic, and it absolutely is difficult to keep up with them all," Powers said.

One way to interpret those models, Powers said, is to focus more on where they agree than disagree. And until researchers develop a vaccine, at least, she said one theme seems to be consistent.

"A lot of them are saying kind of the same thing at a high level, that social distancing policies will be needed to keep us from putting too much stress on our health care system."

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