COVID Border Accountability Project, a hand-coded global database of border closures introduced during 2020

Abstract

Quantifying the timing and content of policy changes affecting international travel and immigration is key to ongoing research on the spread of SARS-CoV-2 and the socioeconomic impacts of border closures. The COVID Border Accountability Project (COBAP) provides a hand-coded dataset of >1000 policies systematized to reflect a complete timeline of country-level restrictions on movement across international borders during 2020. Trained research assistants used pre-set definitions to source, categorize and verify for each new border policy: start and end dates, whether the closure is "complete" or "partial", which exceptions are made, which countries are banned, and which air/land/sea borders were closed. COBAP verified the database through internal and external audits from public health experts. For purposes of further verification and future data mining efforts of pandemic research, the full text of each policy was archived. The structure of the COBAP dataset is designed for use by social and biomedical scientists. For broad accessibility to policymakers and the public, our website depicts the data in an interactive, user-friendly, time-based map.

Fig. 1

Scope of data collection. (a) Map of border closures enacted in total throughout 2020. The teal color indicates the countries that enacted complete closures at any point in 2020, and pink indicates the same for partial closures. If a country instituted both, we show the complete closure color. Countries for which there were no policies are purple. (b) New policy counts over time and an indication of the official start of the COVID-19 pandemic on 11-March 2020. The first countries to enact new policies are listed on the chart. (c) Breakdown of new complete (teal) and partial (pink) closures over time.

Fig. 2

Overview of data collection process. The flow chart presents the process by which RAs identified, classified, and coded each policy. Complete definitions for each sub-category can be found in Online-only Table 1.

Fig. 3

Data Quality Breakdown by source type. Chart denotes the reliability of data per country in the COBAP dataset (through Dec 2020). Countries whose data use only governmental sources, we rank as “very sure” (blue). For those we could not find governmental sources but found reliable proxies, we rank in the dataset as “sure” (orange). Countries where we could not find governmental or proxy sources for, we rank as “less sure” with a breakdown of the sources used (grey).