‘Quarantine-fatigued’ Americans are going out more than before pandemic, phone data reveals

Americans are reportedly leaving their homes and going out more than they were before the pandemic, the Washington Post reports based on recent cell phone data.

Cell phone movement, which shows when the device is moved more than one mile away from someone's home, was tracked by researchers at the University of Maryland, and they found it was higher the first week in March of this year compared to last year.

Depending on location, the number of daily trips one was higher by at most 13.6 per cent compared to this time last year.

In states like New York, 36 per cent of the population was currently staying home each day, which was higher than the national average and higher than pre-pandemic levels.

But that state was an outlier compared to other areas across the United States. Many states including Arkansas, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri, South Dakota, and Tennessee showed just 24 per cent of the population staying home currently.

Mississippi was one state that has lifted its coronavirus restrictions as more residents access a vaccine, which could be encouraging people to go out more.

Nationally, about 26 per cent of the population was staying home and people were taking an average of 3.75 trips per day out of their home. This time last year, 21 per cent of the population was staying home but people were only taking an average of 3.47 trips per day.

Quarantine fatigue one year after the World Health Organisation declared Covid-19 a pandemic could likely be one reason why more Americans have decided to leave their homes each day.

"We've been through a long winter and a lot of [Covid] cases," Mofeng Yang, the lead researcher on the Maryland Transportation Institute project, told the Washington Post. "People might want to escape from their homes."

Fatigue wasn't just being seen based on people's current movements, but also in how Americans would currently describe their mental health.

In a survey conducted by CNBC and SurveyMonkey, they found that 53 per cent of American women reported mental health problems that have caused burnout in their workplace due to the strain of the pandemic.

Reasons why women could be feeling this burnout higher than men could be because females tend to take on more of the household work, which was likely adding to some strain as more people remain in their homes for extended periods of time. Also, women report experiencing a lack of fairness in the workplace, something that has only further increased during the pandemic.

Public health experts have implored Americans to hang on a little bit longer as more and more of the public receives a coronavirus vaccine.

"Just be prudent a bit longer. We are going in the right direction, we're almost there," Dr Anthony Fauci, the nation's leading health expert, said earlier this week.

The CDC and Biden administration have called on state officials to temporarily halt rolling back coronavirus guidelines at a time when the decline in cases across the US appears to be stalling.

"There is so much that's critical riding on the next two months," CDC Director Dr Rochelle Walensky told the National League of Cities on Wednesday. "How quickly we will vaccinate versus whether we will have another surge really relies on what happens in March and April."