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Domestic Travel Bans Can Increase Covid-19 Cases
When migrants are detained inside a city where infections are growing rapidly, the spread of the disease in their rural home districts is temporarily stopped.
Anant Sudarshan, Fiona Burlig 11 May 2021, Last Updated at 8:29 am Representational image outlookindia.com 2021-05-11T08:29:36+05:30
As India faces a record-shattering second wave of Covid-19 infections, state governments are again faced with some hard questions. Should a hard lockdown be imposed? Should migrant workers seek to return to their villages be prevented from doing so to limit rural spread? Are the high economic costs of travel bans necessary to limit an increasingly gruesome death toll?
Image used for representational purpose only
NAGPUR: Domestic travel bans amidst the deadly Covid-19 pandemic can increase cases, finds the latest study by the University of Chicago. Based on data from India, specifically Mumbai, and five other nations, the study highlights that domestic travel restrictions can lead to more, rather than fewer, infections overall, especially when there is a large urban-rural migrant population.
Released on Thursday, the research paper suggests that imposing travel bans can counter-intuitively increase the total spread of the disease, creating a lose-lose situation. “This outcome occurs when a country has a large migrant population that is prevented from leaving an urban hotspot and returning to rural areas. If the net effect of a travel ban is to delay the movement of these people, rather than prevent it entirely, the policy can lead to more cases overall,” it states.
A representative image: Migrant workers in Delhi. | Adnan Abidi/Reuters
For two years in a row, Covid-19 lockdowns have cost Santosh Das his job in Surat’s powerloom industry and forced him to return to his village in Odisha.
Both times, his journey home has been prefaced by death.
Last year, the man who died was another migrant worker from Odisha, who was beaten to death by the Surat police on May 14. He had been part of a group protest demanding police registration for tickets in the Shramik Special trains, so that desperate migrants stranded in the lockdown could return home. Das did not personally know him, but his death paved the way for his return.
Many migrant labourers head back home
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Good occupancy was witnessed in the Tiruchi - Howrah special train which left from here on Friday.
Many north Indian labourers headed back to their native State amid spike in COVID-19 cases in Tiruchi and elsewhere in the State and in the wake of the restrictions imposed to check the spread of the virus.
Railway officials said there was no overcrowding at the Tiruchi Junction for this bi-weekly inter-State special as the occupancy was well within the capacity of the train which passes via three states before reaching Howrah. All passengers who had boarded from Tiruchi Junction had booked their tickets in advance as only reserved passengers were being allowed to travel. It was ensured at Tiruchi Junction that departing passengers wore masks and their temperature monitored by automatic thermal cameras installed at the station.