Australians are ditching public transport and avoiding the office but piling into pharmacies to try to purchase rapid antigen tests, as fear of contracting omicron causes people to cut back on non-essential outings.
An analysis of Google mobility data by The Australian Financial Review reveals that Australians have drastically cut back on their use of public transport and are spending more time than usual at home during the omicron wave.
It comes amid expectations that the explosion in cases over the past month will lead to a softening in economic activity as people self-regulate, dubbed the “shadow lockdown”, with Prime Minister Scott Morrison saying earlier in January that omicron was having a “dampening impact on consumer demand”.
The mobility data show that Australians are avoiding the office, with many companies reverting to work-from-home mandates.
The largest decline in trips to the office has been in the ACT, where mobility is down 19 percentage points relative to the same time last year.
The next largest falls were in the Northern Territory and NSW, where mobility is down by 10 percentage points relative to last year.
The only jurisdictions where people are making more trips to work, on average, compared to last year are Tasmania and Western Australia.
Meanwhile, people are spending more time at home than the same time last year, across all states and territories.
People also appear to be staying off public transport, with transit mobility down across all states except Tasmania when compared to the same time last year.
The sharpest declines have been in the ACT, where transit mobility is 23 percentage points lower than last January; South Australia, where mobility is down 14 percentage points, and Queensland, where trips are down by 12 percentage points.
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