Multiple East Texas Counties Score An ‘A’ On Social Distancing, But Two Could Use Some Help
With word spreading throughout the country for non-essential workers to stay at home and promote social distancing, folks in Texas have answered the call. According to a company grading social distancing, Texas overall has scored an A. But what about East Texas?
A company by the name of Unacast has created an interactive project based on GPS location data that roughly measures whether or not people are heeding the advice of officials to help stop the spread of the coronavirus (COVID-19). They call it the 'Social Distancing Scoreboard'.
The scores were determined by the change in average distance traveled compared with how people lived their lives before the coronavirus outbreak. If you cut back on your trips eating out, or to the grocery store, or to work even, the data would show in the report.
Most East Texas counties scored an A, meaning there was at least a 40% decrease in travel. Gregg, Upshur, Smith, Henderson, Anderson, Wood, Rains, and Camp Counties all scored an A on the report.
Harrison and Rusk counties each scored a B with 33% and 36% differences in travel respectively.
But there are two counties that we may need to help get the message to a little more. Hopkins County scored a D with only a 12% change in travel, while Franklin County scored an F with a 0% change seen in travel there.
Unacast says the results are calculated by combining “tens of millions of anonymous mobile phones and their interactions with each other each day” and then extrapolating the results.
“We created the Social Distancing Scoreboard as the first of many tools to help organizations and businesses better understand public behavior in a post COVID-19 world," said Thomas Walle, CEO and co-founder at Unacast, in a news release. "We’ll be updating the Scorecard and enhancing this COVID-19 Toolkit to provide the most timely and accurate information possible, with the hope of ultimately saving lives.”
You can see reports from across the state of Texas here.