“Travel restrictions may play a role in slightly reducing the spread of Covid-19 but place a heavy burden on lives and livelihoods,” Moeti of WHO said in a statement.
I reached the same conclusion after the spread of the Delta variant. Wherever this variant originally came from, by the time it was sequenced and identified it had already spread around the world, and within 6 weeks it had become the dominant variant. So:
👉 Why can’t we learn from what works and does not?
👉 Why do governments keep jumping on travel restrictions?
👉 Why penalise the countries who were first to report the variant?
👉 What could a data-driven solution look like?
The burden of travel restrictions on lives and economies is proven, their effectiveness on slowing down the variant’s spread is not 🙈
We should develop a model quantifying the relative impacts of sanitary measures (masks, distancing…) and travel restrictions on the virus spread in case of a new variant (similar to the model proposed by Robert Boyle on 9 Jan 2021).
We should present this model to government reps and show them what measures will work for the next variant – and which ones are useless.
By the way this model could support the communication of governments to justify what measures they prioritise (closing borders, closing schools, closing museums…).
Who could then, as a legitimate ambassador for this model, engage the governments that still believe in banning flights to isolate their respective country from a new variant? 🤨
