Did border closures slow SARS-CoV-2?

Abstract

Despite the economic, social, and humanitarian costs of border closures, more than 1000 new international border closures were introduced in response to the 2020-2021 pandemic by nearly every country in the world. The objective of this study was to examine whether these border closures reduced the spread of the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). Prior to 2020, the impacts of border closures on disease spread were largely unknown, and their use as a pandemic policy was advised against by international organizations. We tested whether they were helpful in reducing spread by using matching techniques on our hand-coded COVID Border Accountability Project (COBAP) Team database of international closures, converted to a time-series cross-sectional data format. We controlled for national-level internal movement restrictions (domestic lockdowns) using the Oxford COVID-19 Government Response Tracker (OxCGRT) time-series data. We found no evidence in favor of international border closures, whereas we found a strong association between national-level lockdowns and a reduced spread of SARS-CoV-2 cases. More research must be done to evaluate the byproduct effects of closures versus lockdowns as well as the efficacy of other preventative measures introduced at international borders.