No overseas travel for sometime yet: Hirji
It could take six days to infect 1M people globally, meaning exotic vacations are off the table
Have dreams about an overseas vacation? Thinking about how a trip to a faraway beach or a tour of exotic cultural sites is exactly how to shake off the pandemic blues?
Don’t get your hopes up. Niagara acting medical officer of health, Dr. Mustafa Hirji has been looking at the data, and while the region’s COVID-19 numbers remain steadily low, that isn’t the case elsewhere in the world.
That means overseas travel will remain limited for some time to come.
When the pandemic started,
Hirji said, it took an estimated 12 days for the virus to infect the first million people. Since then, the time it takes to infect the next million people has steadily decreased. Now, it takes only six days and with daily cases climbing rapidly in countries such as the United States and Brazil, the time it takes to infect the next million people will continue to get shorter.
“I think that we are going to see a lot of travel restrictions going forward,” said Hirji. “What this means is that we aren’t going to back to normal any time soon.”
Globally, the novel coronavirus has infected about 9.5 million people and the disease it causes, COVID-19, is linked to nearly a half-million deaths.
Some countries, including New Zealand, have lowered the infection rate to such a degree that it has lifted most of their restrictions on social and economic activity. In other countries, including Canada, the number of cases is falling and governments are slowly easing restrictions, hoping to restart economies but while avoiding a potential second wave of the virus. But in the U.S., case growth is accelerating. Some states, such as Florida, are now seeing thousands of new cases a day.
The risk of acquiring the virus overseas and bringing it home likely means Canadians will have to explore their homeland instead of going abroad, Hirji said.
“It looks like New Zealand and Australia will form their own bubble and isolate themselves from the rest of the world,” said Hirji.
“It is going to be very difficult for Canada to isolate itself, but I think we will see restrictions on travel.”
Premier Doug Ford is urging Ottawa to keep the Canada-u.s. border closed for the immediate future.