WHY TRAVEL BANS ARE USUALLY THE WRONG WAY TO CURB OMICRON
Most such restrictions are disruptive and ineffectual
Jan 1st 2022 ECONOMIST
Rapidly imposed travel restrictions make sense in the early stages of an outbreak when infections of a variant are few and test-and-trace systems are still able to follow the paths of contagion. When imported cases account for more than 10% of infections, bans can have a big impact on the growth of the epidemic. They can thus buy time to find out about a new variant, prepare hospitals or roll out vaccinations.
But travel bans have a habit of sticking around even though, once a virus or variant is circulating freely in a country, they are largely pointless. By the time France banned non-essential travel from Britain on December 16th, hoping to keep out Omicron, it was already recording a daily average of over 50,000 infections, 10% higher than its peak during the Delta wave earlier in the year. Any imported infections would, by that point, have made little difference to the burden of disease—certainly not enough to justify the economic and social disruption caused by the travel ban.
One reason travel restrictions tend not to have lasting benefits is that most of them are leaky. With very few exceptions, countries let citizens, residents, their families, essential workers, diplomats, important businesspeople or some combination of those cross borders. The countries that impose successful long-term travel bans, as Australia and New Zealand did, must do so at enormous cost not just to their global links but also to their own citizens. For much of 2021 Australians struggled to get back into their own country and had to pay exorbitant amounts for flights and quarantine-hotels to do so. To keep covid-19 out, such measures must be reinforced by draconian curbs at home, too. Australians have not been allowed to cross state borders for most of the past two years; the city of Melbourne was locked down for 262 days in 2021.
Such policies can save lives, and they are less leaky on islands. But few democracies are willing to tolerate them for very long. Indeed, the only country still pursuing a strict zero-covid policy is China, which is taking increasingly desperate measures to contain recent outbreaks of the virus. In Xi’an, a city of about 13m where daily infections have risen from zero to over 100 in December, authorities have imposed a ferocious lockdown, are repeatedly mass-testing the population and have shoved some 30,000 people into hotel quarantine. Such methods are popular in China, where people credit their stern rulers for keeping them safe. But it is far from clear whether China’s zero-covid policy is sustainable, given the high transmissibility of Omicron, nor how China will eventually move beyond it to live with the disease.
THE CASE for VACCINE CERTIFICATES to BEAT COVID-19
People will only have confidence meeting together—for work or leisure—if they have some certainty it is safe
Apr 28th 2021 ECONOMIST
BY ASHISH JHA Ashish Jha is Dean of the Brown University School of Public Health
How will you know if the person next to you on a bus, aeroplane or checkout line is infectious with covid-19? Should you know? How can you keep yourself and your workplace safe in a way that is equitable and protects privacy? As countries administer covid-19 vaccines, having a vaccine certificate—a simple, reliable and secure way to determine who is inoculated—will be critical to making work, school, restaurants, houses of worship and other places safe for everyone.
In America, many universities have announced plans to bring students back to campus for in-person classes by mandating vaccinations. Without a mandate, many students might forgo a jab, making classrooms a hotbed of covid-19 infections, and leading everyone back to remote classes, mask wearing and social distancing. Hence universities—like Brown, where I teach—have decided that the in-person educational experience is worth requiring vaccination. They are right.The importance of knowing who has been vaccinated and how safe it is to gather together extends far beyond schools. Ensuring that people feel confident to interact in public is vital to economic revival. Offices, hotels, restaurants and transport firms would substantially boost people’s sense of security by ensuring that everyone sharing the airspace is vaccinated. Individuals and businesses need a way to create virus-free environments for people to interact: the question is not whether to do it, but how.
The state of New York has rolled out a smartphone app that verifies a person’s vaccination status or recent negative test result, allowing admission to public events like baseball games. Hawaii plans to pilot a programme exempting those who can show proof of vaccination from mandatory quarantine requirements. Israel, which has already rolled out a “green pass” system, plans to open the programme to international travelers who can show proof of vaccination.
All of these systems rely on the same principle: allowing individuals to certify that they do not pose a significant risk of covid infection to others so they can take part in activities that might otherwise be unacceptably risky for both the individual and the community. Unvaccinated people have no right to impose such risks on others, particularly when effective vaccines become more widely available. Allowing businesses and universities to return to a new normal by making informed choices about risk is how society will reopen in the months to come.
Still there are those who object to vaccine certificates, concerned they will do more harm than good. Those objections need to be refuted.
Some people worry that vaccine certificates will worsen equity. In a world where vaccine supply is limited and access to them inequitably distributed, it doesn’t seem fair to open society to the vaccinated but not the rest. But over time, there will be fewer and fewer people unable to access a vaccine, at least in some countries. In America, every adult is entitled to a free vaccine now and can get one quickly. In most of Europe, broad access will happen by summer. At that point, excluding the unvaccinated will mean barring those who have chosen to forgo vaccinations.
Some people regard vaccine certificates as an infringement on personal freedom. This is nonsense. A person who chooses to remain unvaccinated need not be denied their basic rights, notably the ability to access essential government services. But there is no fundamental right to board a flight or attend a football game when you pose a hazard to others. Companies offering those services have a clear and compelling need to make their business activities safe. They can choose to exclude anyone they want for almost any reason they want, as long as it is not for specifically forbidden reasons (such as a person’s race, ethnicity, gender, and so forth).
Still, other people may argue that religious freedom is at stake. This also doesn’t hold up. Religious leaders, including the Pope and senior clergy in America’s Christian Evangelical movement like Franklin Graham, have advocated for vaccinations. Islamic religious leaders have argued that it is acceptable to get vaccinated while fasting during Ramadan. In the absence of mainstream religious objections to vaccinations, vaccine certifications do not discriminate against any major religious group.
The idea of requiring proof of vaccination is hard without precedent. Global travelers have been required to prove vaccination against yellow fever for decades. Colleges and schools mandate vaccines regularly. As a physician, I will be barred from treating patients if I choose not to show proof of my influenza vaccination every year. Covid-19 is certainly no less a threat than influenza or yellow fever.
The World Health Organisation is opposed to requiring proof of vaccination for international travel, in part because much of the world lacks access to vaccines. But its guidance will probably change as more vaccines become available. We need to jumpstart the global economy and allow travel to resume, and that means allowing people to safely visit other countries and avoid long quarantines, which can only happen with proof of vaccination. This should behoove the West to invest more in vaccination programs in other countries.
To be sure, vaccination certificates are unlikely to be needed over time. As the world reaches herd immunity, countries will worry less about infections. Testing can be used to identify outbreaks or the stray traveler with the virus. Many indoor venues, such as theaters and retail stores, will decide that they no longer need to check the certificates. But that is still many months, and possibly years, away. Until then, vaccine certificates will be a crucial tool in the fight against covid-19.
How can those who favour vaccine passports respond to concerns by critics? One way would be to set a public target. This borrows from an approach by West Virginia Governor Jim Justice, who said the state will lift a mandate that face masks be worn indoors in public places once the state vaccination rate hits 70%. Similarly, for vaccine certificates, governments could set a goal at which they would no longer be required (though the target would be closer to a 90% vaccination rate for population-level immunity). The target, along with an “expiration date” for certificates, may motivate people to get their jabs—and increase acceptance for vaccine certificates.
Vaccines offer a way out of the pandemic. The path will be long, bumpy and uneven. Until both America and the world reach herd immunity, governments will need to manage risk. Yet vaccinations are only part of the solution, they are not the goal, which is to make communities safe and let normal life resume. For that, vaccine certificates are needed so everyone’s full participation in society can be restored.
Ashish Jha is Dean of the Brown University School of Public Health