Continual travel bans will not stop the spread of the new corona virus

Restrictions on flights in and out of China had not prevented the new corona virus from circling the world, shows a new model. Even if the number of international journeys in and out of China was reduced by 90 percent after February 1, the path of the epidemic would not have changed significantly – not without other efforts to stop the spread of infections, such as the isolation of people who were sick .

The model, published in the magazine Science, was built with transport data and information about the dynamics of COVID-19, the disease caused by the new corona virus. The authors generated a number of possible scenarios for the movement of the disease through China and the rest of the world.

Officials have quarantined the city of Wuhan, China, where the virus originated, at the end of January. The model discovered that shutting down Wuhan airport would only delay the spread of the epidemic through mainland China by one week. By January 23 it turned out that the virus would have been brought to different places in the country. This projection corresponds to data from the World Health Organization (WHO) on cases of COVID-19 in China.

Travel restrictions in and from Wuhan delayed the number of cases imported from China to other countries by two to three weeks, according to the model. But there were already enough cases outside of Wuhan that it was impossible to stop international spread – the virus could travel from Shanghai, Beijing, Shenzhen and other cities.

The conclusions of the model were reflected by WHO experts. “Movement restrictions measures have delayed the spread of the outbreak in China for two or three days and a few weeks outside of China,” said Sylvie Briand, Director of Infectious Hazard Management at the WHO, in a press conference.

The WHO originally said that countries should not limit travel in response to the new virus, and experts doubted the wisdom of locking cities. But while it did not prevent the epidemic from leaping outside of China, the delay bought other countries for some time to prepare. However, the costs for people living in Wuhan have been high – residents and health workers have lived and worked under one psychological and physically demanding close for weeks.

Now that the virus is present all over the world, additional or ongoing travel restrictions are likely to have a limited impact on the epidemic, the researchers wrote. Policy that reduces the spread of diseases within communities, such as early detection and isolation of cases, is the best way to combat the outbreaks, they concluded.