Coronavirus: What telco data tells us about the economic impact of lockdown

Thursday, 9 April 2020

Empty streets make for great scooting as Auckland roads rid themselves of cars during the country's lockdown period.

Location data being used to inform the Government's pandemic planning also highlights the economic impact of the country's escalating restrictions.

The telecommunications data, being crunched by Data Ventures, a data brokerage and commercial arm of Statistics New Zealand, reveals spending spikes following Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern's announcements, and shows the death of the tourism industry, says executive director Drew Broadley. It also hints at what a post-pandemic New Zealand could look like.

Data Ventures was pulled into conversations with the National Crisis Management Centre several weeks ago, to help monitor how New Zealanders' behaviours and movements were changing in the lead up to and during lockdown.

'Pandemic modelling has been our most critical use and number one priority,' Broadley says.

* Sales fell 85 per cent as Taranaki moved into lockdown, retail data shows

* Coronavirus: Auckland's public transport patronage cut by 96 per cent**

The data is aggregated and anonymised, and provides snapshots of the number of people per territory per hour.

'We can't track an individual's movements.'

Ardern's announcements about New Zealand's borders closing, the implementation of the alert level system, and subsequent declarations of the country being at level 3 and level 4, had direct impacts on essential services such as supermarkets and hospitals, Broadley says.

When borders closed to those who aren't permanent residents or citizen, with very limited exceptions, at midnight on March 19, the hit to tourism was immediate.

By the time Ardern revealed a four-level Covid-19 alert system, and declared the country at level 2, on March 21, the number of international visitors in the country had plummeted.

'We saw the death of tourism in three days,' Broadley says.

By the time level 4, or lockdown, was in place, at midnight on March 25, a snapshot of Queenstown showed a 90 per cent fall in visitor numbers.

For a nation with tourism as its top export earner, the effect of the virus not only on jobs and businesses but also the wider economy is expected to be devastating. The 3.9 million overseas visitors to New Zealand last year spent the equivalent of $47 million a day, with domestic travel making up the remaining 60 per cent of the $41 billion in total annual tourism spending.

Broadley – like many – believes encouraging domestic tourism will be key. 'If we can get [domestic tourism] up and going again, even if our borders remain closed, we'll have a relatively good recovery.'

Data Ventures is also helping the Government track the remaining short-term visitors in the country. 'We want to make sure they're not stuck in rural areas with no resources.'

Location data over the same time period showed increased activity at two main, essential services: supermarkets and hospitals.

Overlayed with provisional spending data, it also showed people 'freaking out and spending', particularly after Ardern announced the impending lockdown.

Data from Auckland's Sylvia Park showed people continued to hit the shops until the last possible moment. Since lockdown, there has been a 50 per cent reduction in retail, showing people are continuing to use essential services such as supermarkets.

'It's been good for the Government to understand how much these organisations are being stretched,' Broadley says.

'When there's movement in residential areas we're seeing it's because [people] are going to essential areas.'

What they can't see is the odd person breaching the rules by, for example, driving to the beach. 'And we wouldn't want to be able to see that.'

In suburbs with large hospitals, population movements usually reveal times of staffing changeover. But as many hospitals have made changes to their rosters and shifts as they plan for Covid-19, those patterns have disappeared.

'You can see they've really ramped up staffing,' Broadley says.

Overall, he says, the low levels of variation of population counts mean the country is doing 'really well' during lockdown. 'We've just got to keep it up.'

The takeaway message aligns with Google data, released last week as part of a global mobility report.

The report showed a 91 per cent drop in Kiwis visiting 'retail and recreation' venues such as cafes and shopping centres, and a 54 per cent drop in people visiting grocery stores and pharmacies.

While the Google data is based on people using Google Maps and opting to share their location history with the company, Data Ventures uses cell tower location data, which provides a better penetration of mobile devices across all social demographics. The data is then adjusted to be representative of the country's population.