Impact of COVID in Spain with data on mobility, electricity demand and card expenditure

BBVA, Iberdrola and Telefónica have joined forces to analyze the consequences of the first wave of COVID-19 - between March and August 2020 - on household spending, electricity consumption and mobility.

Key points

• Key points:
• BBVA, Iberdrola and Telefónica have joined forces to analyze the consequences of the first wave of the COVID-19 by sharing analyses based on daily, anonymized records of card and POS use, company electricity consumption and mobility in Spain.
• The risk of successive outbreaks of the epidemic and the uncertainty caused by this unprecedented situation in Spain requires the use of reliable, high-frequency and granular data to generate timely and detailed diagnoses and thus take action to limit the impact of the epidemic on the economic activity.
• The arrival of the coronavirus in Spain began to undermine, in early March, consumption and, to a greater extent, mobility. Home confinement and restrictions on production affected the behavior of agents and economic activity differently.
• The differential evolution also occurred in the process of reopening by phases. In the first stage, de-escalation generated a much faster reactivation of consumption and mobility. As de-escalation progressed, mobility lagged behind in the recovery more than card purchases on a sustained basis. Moreover, the recovery in consumption and mobility at the provincial level was not homogeneous.
• This study shows that the continuous use of real-time data will make it possible to calibrate future containment scenarios at any time and assist in decision-making, minimizing the social and economic impact of the restrictions adopted to combat the pandemic.

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