Transcript Sustaining the Response: Pandemics, Border Controls and International Travel Professor David Heymann CBE Distinguished Fellow, Global Health Programme, Chatham House, Executive Director, Communicable Diseases Cluster, World Health Organization (1998-2003) Professor Kelley Lee Professor, Canada Research Chair Tier I, Simon Fraser University Alexandre de Juniac Director-General and CEO, International Air Transport Association (IATA) Chair: Emma Ross Senior Consulting Fellow, Global Health Programme, Chatham House Event date: 26 February 2021 The views expressed in this document are the sole responsibility of the speaker(s) and participants, and do not necessarily reflect the view of Chatham House, its staff, associates or Council. Chatham House is independent and owes no allegiance to any government or to any political body. It does not take institutional positions on policy issues. This document is issued on the understanding that if any extract is used, the author(s)/speaker(s) and Chatham House should be credited, preferably with the date of the publication or details of the event. Where this document refers to or reports statements made by speakers at an event, every effort has been made to provide a fair representation of their views and opinions. The published text of speeches and presentations may differ from delivery. © The Royal Institute of International Affairs, 2021. 10 St James’s Square, London SW1Y 4LE T +44 (0)20 7957 5700 F +44 (0)20 7957 5710 www.chathamhouse.org Patron: Her Majesty The Queen Chair: Jim O’Neill Director: Dr Robin Niblett Charity Registration Number: 208223 2 Sustaining the Response: Pandemics, Border Controls and International Travel Emma Ross Good afternoon and thanks for joining us again for the Chatham House COVID-19 webinar series with our distinguished Fellow, Professor David Heymann. Today we’re going to be talking about what’s going on across the world with border controls and travel restrictions and with getting everyone back to international travel and how the new variants and the vaccines are likely to influence how we travel, for the foreseeable future. With us to discuss this are Kelley Lee and Alexandre de Juniac. Kelley is an expert in international relations and global health governance at Simon Fraser University in Canada. A big focus of her research at the moment is her leadership of the Pandemics and Borders Project, which is tracking the use of travel restrictions and other cross-border measures during the pandemic. Alexandre is the Director General and CEO of IATA, which is the International Air Transport Association, the body that represents the global aviation industry. He has almost three decades of experience in both the private and public sectors, including senior positions in the airline and aerospace industry and the French Government. And of course, IATA is in the thick of what’s going on at the global level, in terms of trying to work out how to get everyone flying again in the COVID era and beyond, but there’s still a lot to be done in the COVID era. So, I think also on hand with Alexandre is David Powell, IATA’s medical advisor, in case there are any more technical questions that he might need to respond to, but I’m not sure that that’s still the case, but anyway, welcome to you all, and thank you for joining us. Before we dive in, the usual housekeeping and the event’s on the record, and to ask a question, please write them at any time in the ‘Q&A’ function on Zoom. Upvoted questions are more likely to be selected, so, please use that if you like a question. So, we will start now. A lot of hope is being pinned on vaccination as the way through this, as we know, and of course, the emergence of the new variants has shown that it may not be that simple, as well as the different perceptions of the different vaccines. Similar issues with the prospect of mutual recognition of the various test results. As if that wasn’t complicated enough, you’ve also got fake test result documents being bought on the internet, the prospect of vaccination certification fraud, even fake vaccines. Anyway, it’s a bit of a nightmare, so there’s lots to sort out on this. I’m going to start, David, with you, if I may? The issue of border closures or border measures, travel restrictions, is a bit controversial, especially as it’s so economically damaging, but disease does spread through international travel, doesn’t it? I mean, before we get into the discussion of what’s been going on with border controls and travel restrictions, David, can you kick us off by outlining, purely from an infectious disease control point of view, what the evidence says about whether and how taking measures at points of entry affects the spread at any stage of an outbreak. I mean, what’s actually effective in this area? Professor David Heymann CBE Well, thanks, Emma, and thanks to our colleagues who have joined today. Clearly, borders are the focus of attention because they’re where passengers travel internationally. But history has shown that border controls are not a permanent solution to stopping the spread of infectious diseases internationally. In SARS it clearly showed that disease could spread in the incubation period, while people were infected yet show up in another country. And so, generally, infectious diseases, the most important way of dealing with diseases that come in from outside, is to have good disease detection and response networks around the country, to rapidly detect and respond. 3 Sustaining the Response: Pandemics, Border Controls and International Travel However, with this current pandemic there are many new tools that may make it even more possible to do some type of examination at borders, if countries decide to do that, in order to make sure that people are, at least at the time they cross the border, not showing that they have infection. And these include new diagnostic tests, which can rapidly, within 15 minutes, show if someone is positive, but not all positives will be picked up by this method. There’s also been attempts to try heat and temperature scanning. This shows if people are sick, but it, itself, has not been shown to stop disease from spreading across borders, because again, it can spread in people in who are not showing a fever symptom. Though, there are many new tools that are available. There are vaccines now coming online as well, and all of these will play a role, certainly in getting us back to safe travel, but we have to remember that vaccines need to have equitable distribution, that there are human rights issues about quarantining at border posts, and a whole series of things that need to be worked out, and that are being tried for the first time during this pandemic. So right now, we’re learning a lot that’s new. We’ve seen that borders do not stop disease from entering countries, but that possibly you can decrease the entry of disease and make travel safer by some of the new tools and new mechanisms that are being used during the COVID pandemic. Emma Ross Okay, thank you, David, that’s a great start. Kelley, I’m going to move to you, if I may. What do you think is notable about how the border controls issue has been playing out during the pandemic, and could it have been any different? Professor Kelley Lee Yes, well, thanks, first of all, for inviting me to join you all. It’s a really complicated area and more complicated than I ever imagined. So, we’re one year into the project, Pandemics and Borders Project, and what we’ve noticed most strikingly is the diversity of practices that have been going on across different countries. So, what we’ve done is, we’ve been analysing this large dataset of every country’s use of cross-border measures during COVID-19. And there’s a couple of key variations in how people or how governments have responded during the pandemic. Firstly, there’s very big differences in who is permitted to travel. There’s all sorts of conditions of – which really gives you eligibility to travel. It might be based on citizenship, residence, purpose of your travel, often we hear the term ‘essential travel’, it could be your occupation, for example, and of course, infection status. So, these permissions are sometimes based on some sort of risk analysis. It might be, you know, because you’re from a high-risk country, or it’s largely often because of political and economic factors. If you needed, for example, migrant workers to come and pick agricultural crops. So that’s a sort of economic factor. So, there’s wide, wide variation in how countries have dealt with who’s permitted to travel. You think about Australia putting a cap on the number of people that can arrive internationally and it has to be, you know, usually Australian citizens or residents. And then you think about the UK, which has more of a risk-based approach, with its red list of countries, and so, that’s the first thing. And the second variation really is about the conditions under which travel is permitted. So again, large variation, this involves health screening, testing, quarantine isolation and contact tracing. All of these measures that are used in different ways and different combinations, different points of a traveller’s journey, and also, with different levels of stringency. So, all of this, you know, creates a really complicated 4 Sustaining the Response: Pandemics, Border Controls and International Travel picture about who’s doing what and really about how we understand which is the most effective, which isn’t effective, which is not necessary and so on, and that’s what we’re trying to figure out in our project.