Evaluating the effectiveness of travel bans

Date:
August 3, 2020
Source:
International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis
Summary:
A new study sheds light on how COVID-19 spreads regionally and
between countries, as well as on how effective governmental measures
to curb the spread of the pandemic have been to date.



FULL STORY ==========================================================================
With the reopening of flights during the summer holiday season in Europe,
many countries have started to see an increase in COVID-19 infections. A
new IIASA- led study sheds light on how COVID-19 spreads regionally and
between countries, as well as on how effective governmental measures to
curb the spread of the pandemic have been to date.


==========================================================================
The current COVID-19 pandemic has prompted countries around the
world to institute travel bans restricting the influx of visitors from especially countries where the spread of the virus is still rampant. Such restrictions, as well as other measures put in place by governments
to curb the spread of COVID- 19, have been heavily criticized in both
political and public debate, prompting many to wonder how effective
current measures aimed at reducing the spread of the pandemic really
are. To address this uncertainty, IIASA researchers examined how the
virus is spread regionally as well as between countries, and how this
develops over time. The study's surprising results have been published
in Letters in Spatial and Resource Sciences.

According to the authors, the majority of studies about transmission
of COVID- 19 tend to focus on specific countries. This study however,
explored a much wider cross-section of countries and used approaches more commonly applied to estimate regional transmission of economic quantities
(such as GDP or trade).

The main questions that the researchers wanted to address were, on the
one hand, whether governmental measures have actively been reducing the
cross- border transmission of COVID-19 cases and, on the other hand, which channels were the main sources of transmission across national borders.

"Back in January this year, the virus was often seen as a Chinese and
later an Italian problem. Due to the rapid spread of COVID-19 across
the globe, however, almost all Western countries reacted by employing
measures to contain or delay the spread of the virus," explains study
lead author Tama's Krisztin, a researcher in the IIASA Ecosystems Services
and Management Program. "It is important to model daily infection counts
across countries to assess the effectiveness of government measures
such as border closures and flight suspensions, and also to estimate
scenarios of what the infection rate would look like if such measures
were not taken." The results indicate that cross-country transmission processes, specifically via international flight connections, played a particularly important role in the early stages of the virus' spread
and that the shutdown of international airports and border closures
were indeed important policies to prevent further spillovers across
countries. It appears that governments, who took early action to reduce cross-border air passenger traffic, did in fact do the right thing to
prevent the spread of infection. The research also supports anecdotal
evidence that countries that delayed closing their borders to air traffic
have higher infection rates.

Also interesting to note is the fact that the spread between countries
could mostly be explained by international flight connections between
them, rather than shared borders (land-travel transmission). The
researchers point out that this could also explain why Austria was
relatively more affected by the virus than, for instance, neighboring
countries in Eastern Europe, even though they share land borders with
Austria.

"In the face of decreasing public appetite for travel restrictions,
and understandable concern over the economic consequences of drastic
lockdown measures, we want to support and strengthen the decisions taken
by European and most other governments in this regard. The policies they introduced appear to have played a particular role in reducing COVID-19
cases, flattening the curve, relieving stress on the healthcare system
and, ultimately, saving lives," says Krisztin.

The researchers caution that as governments reopen cross-border air
traffic, they should carefully evaluate where they allow flights to,
and which regions they accept flights from. The scale of this traffic
should also be carefully calibrated and continually monitored. The study clearly demonstrates that cross-border air traffic is a very important
channel for spread of COVID-19, and as opposed to land travel where the
spread is geographically limited, air traffic allows the virus to jump countries and continents in a very short time.


========================================================================== Story Source: Materials provided by International_Institute_for_Applied_Systems_Analysis.

Note: Content may be edited for style and length.


========================================================================== Journal Reference:
1. Tama's Krisztin, Philipp Piribauer, Michael Wo"gerer. The spatial
econometrics of the coronavirus pandemic. Letters in Spatial and
Resource Sciences, 2020; DOI: 10.1007/s12076-020-00254-1 ==========================================================================

Link to news story: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/08/200803120134.htm

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