Sacramento residents left home more often last month. Here’s what the tracking data show

Sacramento metro residents went shopping, drove to work and visited parks much more often as COVID-19 cases and deaths spiked in July than they did in April, according to mobility data from Google.

State and local health officials ordered residents to stay home and closed many types of businesses in late March and early April. Residents largely complied, dramatically reducing trips from home, Google data show.

As some of those rules were relaxed in May and early June, fewer Sacramento residents stayed at home. That trend continued even as some restrictions were later put back into place due to large increases in COVID-19 cases and deaths.

Health officials reported 9,102 new cases and 87 new deaths in the Sacramento region during July, up from 1,072 new cases and 56 new deaths in April, state data show.

Google measures the number of visits and the length of visits to certain places using cell phone location data. As a baseline for comparison, it uses data from January and early February, before the COVID-19 crisis blossomed.

One category tracked by Google is “retail and recreation” — visits to “places like restaurants, cafes, shopping centers, theme parks, museums, libraries, and movie theaters.” The category does not include trips to grocery stores, pharmacies or outdoor parks and beaches. (More on those in a minute.)

The data show that residents of Placer, El Dorado, Sacramento and Yolo counties reduced retail and recreation travel by an average of 45 to 55 percent in April, depending on the county. By July, that reduction had fallen to between roughly 5 and 30 percent, depending on the county.

Local commutes to workplaces increased as businesses began to reopen, the data show. Sacramento region residents reduced travel to work by 45 to 55 percent in April. By July, that reduction had fallen to between roughly 35 and 40 percent.

Travel to grocery stores and pharmacies dropped in April but is now roughly at levels seen before the crisis throughout the region. Those types of stores have generally remained open during the pandemic.

Travel for outdoor recreation like “local parks, national parks, public beaches, marinas, dog parks, plazas and public gardens” has increased sharply throughout the region, particularly in Placer and El Dorado counties, where snow has melted from hiking trails and public beaches around Lake Tahoe have opened. The CDC recommends getting plenty of outdoor recreation close to home during the crisis but also notes that such trips carry some risk.