Throughout 2020, national and subnational governments worldwide implemented nonpharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) to contain the spread of COVID-19. These included community NPIs of varying length, scope, and stringency that restricted mobility. To assess the effect of community quarantines on urban mobility in the Philippines, we introduce and analyze a new source of data: cellphone-based origin-destination flows made available by a major telecom. First, we characterize the distribution of pre-COVID flow volume at the municipality level. Then, we demonstrate the impulse response of mobility to strict lockdowns starting in March 2020, contrasting the responses in a few key cities. Finally, we assess the heterogeneous effects of varying stringency levels of lockdown by city characteristics, focusing on municipal employment composition. We compare our findings with cross-country evidence on lockdowns and mobility, discuss the economic implications for containment policies in the Philippines, and suggest additional research that can be based on this novel dataset.

JEL codes: I18, J61, K32, O18