Chennai’s going shopping again, says eye in the sky – Times of India

CHENNAI: Chennai is learning to live with the virus as every government move to ease restrictions is being matched by an increase in people around shopping hubs, offices, parks/recreation centres and supermarket/grocery stores in the city.
Data from Google’s Covid-19 mobility report — a tracker that measures people congestion around specific points based on location data— shows 28% more people moved around retail and recreation centres as on Aug 20 (the latest available date of data) compared to July 2 (a corresponding Friday last month) when most shopping and recreation hubs remained closed.

Similarly, as stores are open for longer times and people begin to step out for essentials more freely, people movement around supermarkets, grocery stores and pharmacies is up by around 8% in this period of comparison.
As the government allowed all kinds of public transport to operate, the category of places called public transit stations saw a 11% increase in people movement from July 2 to August 20.
Starved for open physical spaces, more people are also visiting public gardens and parks with a 7% rise in human traffic around such areas as defined by Google.
As companies vaccinate staff and more offices get employees back to work, people movement around the city’s workplace hubs also started seeing a marginal 5% rise as of August 20 compared to July when WFH was more common.
Google charts movement trends across different categories of places such as retail and recreation (including stores, cafes, restaurants, cinemas etc), supermarkets and pharmacies, parks, public transit stations, workplaces, and residential. Google arrives at the insights using anonymized sets of data from users who have turned on the Location History setting on their Google accounts.
K T Srinivasa Raja, MD of Adyar Ananda Bhavan hotel chain, said footfalls are at 70-80% of pre-Covid levels currently, but large gatherings or family dining has still not picked up.
The Google report calculates changes in movement of citizens on various dates in comparison to a baseline date in February 2020 (pre-Covid). So, assuming 100 people visited retail stores in Chennai in February, Google’s analysis of location data of users showed that movement around shopping hubs was down 42% on July 2, and 26% on August 20- denoting 28% rise in movement from July to August.
BK Shankar, CEO of electronics chain Viveks said footfalls have been positive and on the upswing in the last one month. “Earlier, full families used to come out for electronics purchase but now we see people coming in smaller groups leaving behind small children or elders at home. Other than that, people have been coming out and shopping as usual,” he said.