Are travel restrictions effective against Covid-19?

Borderline

If we all can't travel or see loved ones across borders, please tell me at least it’s working.

In May, I found myself in tears when the British government decided to impose quarantines on anyone returning from France in order to combat covid-19. That was the last straw. How dare they close *my* border? Did it even serve a purpose? When in doubt, go to the library. I turned to science to find out if I had been right to cry or if indeed, the government was doing the right thing. What I found out is... it's complicated.

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Sources & further reading

• Delaying the Covid-19 epidemic in Australia: evaluating the effectiveness of international travels bans, Adeshina Adekunle, Michael Meehan, Diana Rojas‐Alvarez, James Trauer and Emma McBryde. Australian and New Zealand Journal of Public Health, 2020 Vol. 44 No. 4.
• Mobility restrictions for the control of epidemics: When do they work?, Baltazar Espinoza, Carlos Castillo-Chavez, Charles Perrings. PLoS ONE 15(7).
• Travel restrictions and infectious disease outbreaks, Ria Vaidya, MSc, Asha Herten-Crabb, MSc, Julia Spencer, MSc, Suerie Moon, PhD, Louis Lillywhite, MSc. Journal of Travel Medicine, Volume 27, Issue 3, April 2020.
• Covid-19 pandemic planning scenarios, US Centers for Disease Control, updated 10 September 2020
• WHO Director-General Dr Tedros address to the 146th Session of the Executive Board, 3 February 2020
• Simulating an epidemic, 3Blue1Brown, 27 March 2020
• Ski, Parti, Seed a Pandemic: The Travel Rules that Let Covid-19 Take Flight, Selam Gebrekidan, Katrin Bennhold, Matt Apuzzo and David D. Kirkpatrick, The New York Times, 30 September 2020.

Credits

Music by Dyalla. Additional music by Chris Zabriskie.

Sounds by PiR2, straget, thorvandahl and InspectorJ on freesound.org, under Creative Commons license

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