茄子直播

Travel bans won鈥檛 help in the fight against coronavirus, 茄子直播's Vivek Goel writes in CBC op-ed

Photo of a flight information board at an airport showing a cancelled flight to Shanghai
(photo by Steve Parsons/PA Images via Getty Images)

In wake of the novel coronavirus outbreak (2019-nCoV), many countries are facing political pressure to implement travel bans. The United States, for example, announced entry restrictions that would bar non-U.S. citizens who had recently traveled to China, and at least 20 other countries have also imposed travel restrictions.

But Vivek Goel, the University of Toronto鈥檚 vice-president, research and innovation, and strategic initiatives and a professor at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health,  that these measures 鈥渁ren't supported by science or evidence-based public health best practices.鈥

鈥淚f travel restrictions had been necessary, the time to have used them would have been much more than two weeks ago, given the lifecycle of the virus,鈥 writes Goel.

On top of that, travel bans can come at a huge economic cost. When the World Health Organization advised travellers to avoid Toronto in 2003 during the SARS outbreak, Goel writes, that the move did little to limit the spread of the virus but cost the tourism industry an estimated $1.1 billion.

 

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