A group of experts from Hungary, including Dr. Tamás Joó, the Vice President of HMA, in their article published in Scientific Reports March 2021 issue, presented the Hungarian experience of how anonymized aggregate cellular data, covering 98.7% of the 8.6 million mobile phone subscribers, were used for monitoring the effectiveness of physical distancing measures during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Mobile phones have been used to monitor mobility changes during the COVID-19 pandemic, but surprisingly, few studies addressed in detail the implementation of practical applications involving whole populations. The authors report a method of generating a “mobility-index” and a “stay-at-home/resting-index” based on aggregated anonymous Call Detail Records of almost all subscribers in Hungary, which tracks all phones, examining their strengths and weaknesses, comparing it with Community Mobility Reports from Google, limited to smartphone data.
The impact of policy changes, such as school closures, could be identified with sufficient granularity to capture a rush to shops prior to the imposition of restrictions. Anecdotal reports of large-scale movement of Hungarians to holiday homes were confirmed. At the national level, the results correlated well with Google mobility data, but there were some differences at weekends and national holidays, which can be explained by methodological differences.
Mobile phones offered a means to analyze population movement, but there were several technical and privacy issues. Overcoming these, the method introduced in the study is a practical and inexpensive way forward, achieving high levels of accuracy and resolution, especially where smartphone uptake is modest. However, it is not an alternative to smartphone-based solutions used for contact tracing and quarantine monitoring.
Read the full article here: https://nature.com/articles/s41598-021-81873-6