People in Alabama are slowly limiting their movement in efforts at preventing the continued spread of COVID-19, but along with fellow Southeastern states continue to lag behind other parts of the country, according to newly released national cellphone data.

An analysis of 15 million anonymous cell phones between Feb. 28 and Mar. 27 showed that people in Southeastern states are not staying at home or limiting travel time as much as those living in West, Northwest and Midwest states, according to the data compiled by data intelligence firm Cuebiq and presented by The New York Times.

People in Mobile County have reduced travel by 45 percent but remain one of the largest counties in the country where travel has been reduced by the least amount, according to the Cuebiq data.

Of counties with more than 500,000 people, Jefferson County is second in the country where people traveled the furthest distance between Feb. 28 and Mar. 27. The average distance traveled was 3.1 miles, second only to the 3.4 miles people are travelling in Greenville County, South Carolina.

However, people living in the Southeast are typically more spread out than states with larger cities and many in rural areas do not live close to grocery stores. A 2016 U.S. Department of Agriculture map shows that the Southeast leads the way in regions where people live more than one mile from a grocery store and do not have a car. These areas are typically referred to as food deserts.

This 2016 U.S. Department of Agriculture shows areas in the U.S. where people do not have a car and live one mile from a grocery store.

While movement in Alabama has reduced significantly over the last month, people in some cities are still struggling to limit their travel, aided in part by the reluctance of public officials to issue stay-at-home type orders. Gov. Kay Ivey has so far resisted calls to order citizens to shelter-in-place despite being surrounded by states that have now enacted such precautions.

Overall, the Cuebiq data indicates people living in the Southeast took far longer to reduce their travel to below two miles per day. As of March 26, people living in almost every county in Alabama were still traveling more than two miles per day. It was a similar picture in the rest of the Southeast, while a majority of the rest of the country had limited travel to below two miles weeks earlier.

Experts have said that reducing travel will save lives and help reduce the spread of COVID-19.

“That’s huge,” Aaron A. King, a University of Michigan professor who studies the ecology of infectious disease, told the New York Times. “By any measure this is a massive change in behavior, and if we can make a similar reduction in the number of contacts we make, every indication is that we can defeat this epidemic.”

In general, people in counties with no lockdown orders are traveling three times as much, noted the data.

While no lockdown has been issued in Alabama, other measures have been enacted. Gov. Ivey issued orders prohibiting people gathering in groups of more than 10, she shut public and private beaches on the Gulf Coast and closed the entire bar and restaurant business in the state.

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