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. 2020 Sep;53(5):293-301.
doi: 10.3961/jpmph.20.332. Epub 2020 Aug 30.

The Effects of Border Shutdowns on the Spread of COVID-19

Nahae Kang  1 , Beomsoo Kim  1
Affiliations

The Effects of Border Shutdowns on the Spread of COVID-19

Nahae Kang et al. J Prev Med Public Health. 2020 Sep.

Abstract

Objectives: At the beginning of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, some countries imposed entry bans against Chinese visitors. We sought to identify the effects of border shutdowns on the spread of the COVID-19 outbreak.

Methods: We used the synthetic control method to measure the effects of entry bans against Chinese visitors on the cumulative number of confirmed cases using World Health Organization situation reports as the data source. The synthetic control method constructs a synthetic country that did not shut down its borders, but is similar in all other aspects.

Results: Six countries that shut down their borders were evaluated. For Australia, the effects of the policy began to appear 4 days after implementation, and the number of COVID-19 cases dropped by 94.4%. The border shutdown policy took around 13.2 days to show positive effects and lowered COVID-19 cases by 91.7% on average by the end of February.

Conclusions: The border shutdowns in early February significantly reduced the spread of the virus. Our findings are informative for future planning of public health policies.

Keywords: Border shutdown; Coronavirus; Pandemics; Synthetic control method.

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Conflict of interest statement

CONFLICT OF INTEREST

The authors have no conflicts of interest associated with the material presented in this paper.

Figures

Figure. 1.
Figure. 1.
Effects of the entry ban on the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) epidemic: cumulative number of confirmed cases in the real country (with an entry ban) and synthetic (without an entry ban). (A) Australia, (B) Singapore, (C) USA, (D) Vietnam, (E) Taiwan, and (F) Hong Kong.
Figure. 2.
Figure. 2.
Avoidable infected cases due to the entry ban. This number is calculated by subtracting the number of cases in the real (without an entry ban) from synthetic (with an entry ban) cases (A: Australia, B: Singapore, C: USA, D: Vietnam, E: Taiwan, and F: Hong Kong).
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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