Americans have started leaving home even more than before the pandemic, cellphone data shows...

Americans have begun leaving home more often than before the coronavirus pandemic took hold, reflecting a pent-up desire to venture out as new cases have declined, according to University of Maryland researchers tracking the movement of cellphones. The number of daily trips per person — when a cellphone moved more than a mile from home — had hovered around 90 percent of pre-pandemic levels since rebounding over the summer. But by mid-February, after a slight slump amid a surge in new cases, the number regularly started to exceed pre-pandemic travel.

By the first week of March, the number of trips surpassed those taken each day in the same week last year, before stay-at-home orders kicked in, by as much as 13.6 percent. With such orders having long expired and barely 10 percent of the country fully vaccinated, Americans are demonstrating a growing comfort with heading out, likely the result of declines in new coronavirus cases, hospitalizations and deaths, researchers said. Reaching the first anniversary of pandemic-related restrictions might also have created more severe cases of early spring fever, experts say. Read more at https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/trafficandcommuting/travel-coronavirus-leave-home/2021/03/10/03aefaf0-81a3-11eb-ac37-4383f7709abe_story.html