Travel restrictions and variants of concern: global health laws need to reflect evidence
Benjamin Mason Meier, Judith Bueno de Mesquita, Gian Luca Burci, Danwood Chirwa, Stéphanie Dagron, Mark Eccleston-Turner, Lisa Forman, Lawrence Gostin, Roojin Habibi, Stefania Negri, Alexandra Phelan, Sharifah Sekalala, Allyn Taylor, Pedro Villarreal, Alicia Ely Yamin, Steven Hoffman
Abstract
As the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) spread in the early days of the pandemic, governments neglected World Health Organization (WHO) guidance and imposed travel restrictions. These public health measures employed varied levels of restrictiveness at national borders, in some cases banning all travel between countries. Where these border control measures were undertaken for domestic political reasons, enacted without consideration of public health evidence, they divided the world when solidarity was needed most.1 Such measures undermined global health law that countries have established as a foundation for preventing and responding to public health emergencies of international concern. \n \nWith the emergence of the Omicron variant, national governments once again returned to international travel restrictions, posing challenges for the rule of law in global health governance. Future reforms of global health law must account for this continuing impulse to enact travel restrictions, ensuring that international legal obligations reflect evolving public health evidence.