Quarantine Fatigue Is Setting In As Data Shows People Taking More Trips Since Lockdowns Began

Researchers say 'quarantine fatigue' is setting in as more Americans are venturing outside despite stay-at-home orders that were implemented in mid-March due to the coronavirus outbreak.

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A review of smartphone data shows there was a slight nationwide shift during the week of April 13, say the researchers at the Maryland Transportation Institute at the University of Maryland.

By April 17, the share of Americans who were believed to be staying home declined from the national average of 33 per cent to 31 per cent, compared with the previous Friday. The finding was based on phones that did not move at least a mile that day.

Any increase in travel at the moment would be premature since staying home has been the best way to slow and contain the pandemic, the researchers told the Stamford Advocate.

'We saw something we hoped wasn't happening, but it's there,' said Lei Zhang, lead researcher and director at the institute.

'It seems collectively we're getting a little tired. It looks like people are loosening up on their own to travel more.

The number of work trips, according to the review, remained roughly the same. But, the average number of personal daily trips grew to 2.5 per person, up from 2.4 the previous Friday - a 4 per cent increase.

The review also found trips between counties and states also increased

So far, there have been more than 978,000 cases of coronavirus in the US, which has been blamed for more than 55,000 deaths.

Since the coronavirus is the first pandemic to hit the US in a century, there's no telling how much longer Americans will be able to tolerate staying home.

But the timing of the shift comes as no surprise since it occurred when Americans began protesting stay-at-home orders.

The protests also were encouraged as well by President Donald Trump's tweets calling for support to 'liberate' states from the mandates.

Zhang of the Maryland Transportation Institute said that even the slightest changes can be statistically significant.

It's too soon to know whether the researchers' findings are a one-week blip, or the start of a trend, says Dr. Wilbur Chen, an associate professor at the University of Maryland School of Medicine.

Chen, who serves on Gov. Larry Hogan's covid-19 task force in Maryland, said he'll keep close tabs on the data.

Researchers won't know for several weeks of more travel resulted in more confirmed cases and deaths attributed to COVID-19, the two benchmarks for tracking the outbreak's spread.

'But it all makes sense,' Chen said. 'If people are out and about, there's more risk of transmission, and when there's transmission, you have more cases of hospitalizations and deaths.'

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