The effect of travel restrictions on the spread of the 2019 novel coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak

Paper published in Science looks at how travel and quarantine influence the dynamics of the spread of COVID-19. It concludes that the travel quarantine introduced in Wuhan on 23 January 2020 only delayed epidemic progression by 3 to 5 days within China, but international travel restrictions did help to slow spread elsewhere in the world until mid-February. The results suggest that early detection, hand washing, self-isolation, and household quarantine will likely be more effective than travel restrictions at mitigating this pandemic.

Link to paper: https://science.sciencemag.org/content/368/6489/395.full

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