Coronavirus: health experts tell US Congress travel bans will not stop the outbreak
- Travel bans and quarantines targeting travellers from China, lawmaker hear, are ‘effectively penalising’ the country and may chill the sharing of information
- Those testifying suggest bolstering the preparedness of public health providers in the US and increasing international collaboration
Public health experts warned US lawmakers on Wednesday that aggressive travel restrictions and quarantining measures would do little to combat the global spread of the coronavirus outbreak.
Testifying on Capitol Hill, the experts, including the former coordinator of the US government’s response to the Ebola virus, cautioned that travel bans were not only generally ineffective but could also thwart the ability of the US to work with global partners, including China, to counter the outbreak.
Since Sunday, the US has denied entry to non-US citizens – with some exceptions – arriving from China and quarantining those arriving from Hubei province, where the contagion originated.
Though the US is not the only nor the first nation to institute such measures, Beijing has singled it out as what it considers an instigator of rising global panic over the outbreak of the contagion, also known as 2019-nCoV.
The “best evidence” drawn from past global epidemics had shown that lockdowns on travel generally only delayed an introduction of a contagion by a matter of weeks, said Jennifer Nuzzo, an associate professor at Johns Hopkins University’s Centre for Health Security.