CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Since COVID-19 reached global pandemic status, many countries have faced containment pressures from both domestic and international transmission after experiencing multiple epidemic waves. But according to a new paper co-written by a University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign urban and environmental economics expert, taming domestic transmission of the novel coronavirus ought to be prioritized over international travel bans or restrictions ostensibly aimed at limiting the threat of the virus from abroad.

New research from Yilan Xu, a professor of agricultural and consumer economics at Illinois, shows evidence from China that imported cases of COVID-19 have only a limited effect on a country’s confirmed cases – but that’s only if domestic-transmission mitigation mechanisms have kept the virus in check.

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