Could COVID-19 pandemic be stopped with joint efforts of travel restrictions and public health countermeasures? A modelling study

Kong, Lingcai; Hu, Yi; Wang, Qiang; Chen, Xinda; Yao, Tong; Wang, Yu; Jin, Hui; Fan, Lijun; Du, Wei

OBJECTIVE: We aim to explore and compare the effect of global travel restrictions and public health countermeasures in response to COVID-19 outbreak. DESIGN: A data-driven spatio-temporal modelling to simulate the spread of COVID-19 worldwide for 150 days since 1 January 2020 under different scenarios. SETTING: Worldwide. INTERVENTIONS: Travel restrictions and public health countermeasures. MAIN OUTCOME: The cumulative number of COVID-19 cases. RESULTS: The cumulative number of COVID-19 cases could reach more than 420 million around the world without any countermeasures taken. Under timely and intensive global interventions, 99.97% of infections could be avoided comparing with non-interventions. The scenario of carrying out domestic travel restriction and public health countermeasures in China only could contribute to a significant decrease of the cumulative number of infected cases worldwide. Without global travel restriction in the study setting, 98.62% of COVID-19 cases could be avoided by public health countermeasures in China only compared with non-interventions at all. CONCLUSIONS: Public health countermeasures were generally more effective than travel restrictions in many countries, suggesting multinational collaborations in the public health communities in response to this novel global health challenge.