Google will release statistics starting Friday to help public health officials assess the effectiveness of social distancing measures against COVID-19.
These data will come from information about the location of its users around the world and will be downloadable on a website accessible to 131 countries.
According to the text signed by Google’s director of geographic products, they will reveal the “general trends of movements over time and by geographical area, in different categories of sites, such as entertainment venues, food stores, pharmacies, parks, stations common transport, work centers and residences “.
“We will show trends for several weeks” in the form of “an increase or decrease in the percentage of visits,” he adds.
The idea, says the text, is that the reports help those responsible for public health to make decisions in the management of the coronavirus pandemic.
Google ensures that data that identifies people will not be made available to protect their privacy. To do this, they will use a technique called “differential confidentiality” that adds “noise” to the raw data while keeping real statistics, AFP said.
