skip to main content
US FlagAn official website of the United States government
dot gov icon
Official websites use .gov
A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.
https lock icon
Secure .gov websites use HTTPS
A lock ( lock ) or https:// means you've safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.

Explore Research Products in the PAR
It may take a few hours for recently added research products to appear in PAR search results.


  • NSF Public Access
  • Search Results
  • Sufficient COVID-19 quarantine and testing on international travelers to forestall cross-border transmission after China's removal of the zero-COVID policy in early 2023
Title: Sufficient COVID-19 quarantine and testing on international travelers to forestall cross-border transmission after China's removal of the zero-COVID policy in early 2023
Background Removal of zero-COVID restrictions in China led to a surge in COVID-19 cases. In response, countries imposed restrictions on Chinese travelers. However, border policies imposed may not have been informed by accurate data and may not have provided substantial benefits. Methods We analyzed quarantines sufficient to prevent additional in-country transmission for February 13–19, 2023 based on World Health Organization (WHO) and self-reported infections to estimate prevalence. Results We have shown that self-reported prevalence data indicated more stringent border restrictions compared to WHO-published prevalence statistics. No travel restrictions were required for Singapore, South Korea, and Japan so that infections would not be greater than with complete border closure. However, a 1-, 2-, and 3-day quarantine were indicated for England, Germany, and Scotland respectively. A 10-, 13-, and 14-day quarantine were required for Italy, France, and the Philippines, respectively, to prevent an increase in within-country infections due to travel. Vietnam and Thailand required a complete border shutdown. Conclusion Our results demonstrated the necessity for accurate and timely reporting of pandemic statistics to prevent an increase in viral spread. Through the minimum quarantine analysis, countries can use science to determine policy, minimize international friction, and improve the cost-efficiency of interventions.  more » « less
Award ID(s):
1918784
PAR ID:
10579130
Author(s) / Creator(s):
; ;
Publisher / Repository:
Elsevier
Date Published:
Journal Name:
International Journal of Infectious Diseases
Volume:
145
Issue:
C
ISSN:
1201-9712
Page Range / eLocation ID:
107097
Subject(s) / Keyword(s):
Pandemics, Prevalence, Epidemiology, COVID-19, World Health Organization, Policy
Format(s):
Medium: X
Sponsoring Org:
National Science Foundation
More Like this
  1. ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; (, BMC Public Health)
    Abstract Background Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) led to pandemic that affected almost all countries in the world. Many countries have implemented border restriction as a public health measure to limit local outbreak. However, there is inadequate scientific data to support such a practice, especially in the presence of an established local transmission of the disease. Objective To apply a metapopulation Susceptible-Exposed-Infectious-Recovered (SEIR) model with inspected migration to investigate the effect of border restriction as a public health measure to limit outbreak of coronavirus disease 2019. Methods We apply a modified metapopulation SEIR model with inspected migration with simulating population migration, and incorporating parameters such as efficiency of custom inspection in blocking infected travelers in the model. The population sizes were retrieved from government reports, while the number of COVID-19 patients were retrieved from Hong Kong Department of Health and China Centre for Disease Control (CDC) data. The R 0 was obtained from previous clinical studies. Results Complete border closure can help to reduce the cumulative COVID-19 case number and mortality in Hong Kong by 13.99% and 13.98% respectively. To prevent full occupancy of isolation facilities in Hong Kong; effective public health measures to reduce local R 0 to below 1.6 was necessary, apart from having complete border closure. Conclusions Early complete travel restriction is effective in reducing cumulative cases and mortality. However, additional anti-COVID-19 measures to reduce local R 0 to below 1.6 are necessary to prevent COVID-19 cases from overwhelming hospital isolation facilities. 
    more » « less
  2. ; ; ; (, International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health)
    The ongoing highly contagious coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, which started in Wuhan, China, in December 2019, has now become a global public health problem. Using publicly available data from the COVID-19 data repository of Our World in Data, we aimed to investigate the influences of spatial socio-economic vulnerabilities and neighbourliness on the COVID-19 burden in African countries. We analyzed the first wave (January–September 2020) and second wave (October 2020 to May 2021) of the COVID-19 pandemic using spatial statistics regression models. As of 31 May 2021, there was a total of 4,748,948 confirmed COVID-19 cases, with an average, median, and range per country of 101,041, 26,963, and 2191 to 1,665,617, respectively. We found that COVID-19 prevalence in an Africa country was highly dependent on those of neighbouring Africa countries as well as its economic wealth, transparency, and proportion of the population aged 65 or older (p-value < 0.05). Our finding regarding the high COVID-19 burden in countries with better transparency and higher economic wealth is surprising and counterintuitive. We believe this is a reflection on the differences in COVID-19 testing capacity, which is mostly higher in more developed countries, or data modification by less transparent governments. Country-wide integrated COVID suppression strategies such as limiting human mobility from more urbanized to less urbanized countries, as well as an understanding of a county’s social-economic characteristics, could prepare a country to promptly and effectively respond to future outbreaks of highly contagious viral infections such as COVID-19. 
    more » « less
  3. ; ; ; ; (, Scientific Reports)
    Abstract Most models of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States do not consider geographic variation and spatial interaction. In this research, we developed a travel-network-based susceptible-exposed-infectious-removed (SEIR) mathematical compartmental model system that characterizes infections by state and incorporates inflows and outflows of interstate travelers. Modeling reveals that curbing interstate travel when the disease is already widespread will make little difference. Meanwhile, increased testing capacity (facilitating early identification of infected people and quick isolation) and strict social-distancing and self-quarantine rules are most effective in abating the outbreak. The modeling has also produced state-specific information. For example, for New York and Michigan, isolation of persons exposed to the virus needs to be imposed within 2 days to prevent a broad outbreak, whereas for other states this period can be 3.6 days. This model could be used to determine resources needed before safely lifting state policies on social distancing. 
    more » « less
  4. ; ; ; (, Communications Physics)
    Abstract Despite a number of successful approaches in predicting the spatiotemporal patterns of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic and quantifying the effectiveness of non-pharmaceutical interventions starting from data about the initial outbreak location, we lack an intrinsic understanding as outbreak locations shift and evolve. Here, we fill this gap by developing a country distance approach to capture the pandemic’s propagation backbone tree from a complex airline network with multiple and evolving outbreak locations. We apply this approach, which is analogous to the effective resistance in series and parallel circuits, to examine countries’ closeness regarding disease spreading and evaluate the effectiveness of travel restrictions on delaying infections. In particular, we find that 63.2% of travel restrictions implemented as of 1 June 2020 are ineffective. The remaining percentage postponed the disease arrival time by 18.56 days per geographical area and resulted in a total reduction of 13,186,045 infected cases. Our approach enables us to design optimized and coordinated travel restrictions to extend the delay in arrival time and further reduce more infected cases while preserving air travel. 
    more » « less
  5. ; (, Health and human rights)
    null (Ed.)
    The global public health community is grappling with COVID-2019, a respiratory disease outbreak caused by a novel coronavirus originating from Wuhan, China in late December 2019. A number of countries implemented citizenship-based travel restrictions in late January and early February as an initial response to the outbreak, barring entry to foreign nationals who had previously been in China to prevent the importation of the virus. By early March, when the World Health Organization (WHO) formally declared the outbreak to be a global pandemic, these countries were still relying on travel restrictions as a means of infection control. These travel restrictions constituted restrictions or outright bans on the entry of foreign nationals with a particular citizenship-such policies tend to be popular with a general public with limited public health knowledge. However, travel restrictions are ineffective as an infection control measure and may do more harm than good, depriving the public of its right to health. Furthermore, travel restrictions implemented under the guise of public health policy have historically been used to target migrants and racial and ethnic minorities, violating their rights to nondiscrimination and equal treatment. As states rush to balance public health with politics in their response to this global pandemic, they are sidelining human rights rather than protecting them 
    more » « less
  • Citation Formats
  • MLA
  • APA
  • Chicago
  • BibTeX
  • Save / Share this Record
  • Send to Email