A way to track governments' response and people's mobility changes in response to COVID-19 pandemic

Governments around the globe have been taking a wide range of physical distancing measures in response to the COVID-19 outbreak, such as school closure, workplace closure, cancellations of mass gatherings and stay at home orders. For each country, nine sub-indicators (school closing, workplace closing, cancel public events, restrictions on gatherings, close public transport, stay at home requirements, restrictions on internal movement, international travel controls, and public information campaigns) are synthesized into a common Stringency Index (SI) (a value between 0 and 100) that reflects the overall stringency of a government’s response to COVID-19 pandemic on a daily basis. SI and Community Mobility Report may help policymakers and public health professionals to monitor the impact of policy shift (from stringency to relax) on citizens’ mobility and on the epidemic of COVID-19.