Data from earlier in the pandemic enable us to see how different viral strains emerged over time. If we put this information alongside data from the Oxford COVID-19 Government Response Tracker (OxCGRT) regarding government policies, we can pin down the details of disease spread.
FAILURES OF THE US AND UK
Among G20 countries, the failures of the US and the United Kingdom stand out.
New York was one of the early super-spreader cities. It recorded its first confirmed COVID-19 case on Feb 29, 2020, about a month after the US restricted travel from parts of China.
But even though COVID-19 was raging in Italy, the US introduced restrictions on people arriving from mainland Europe only on Mar 13, two days after the World Health Organization declared a pandemic; and not until Mar 16 did it extend these to arrivals from the UK and Ireland.
Viral sequence data demonstrate that the virus did not move directly from China to New York. Instead, US hesitancy to clamp down on travel from Europe was largely responsible for multiple introductions of the virus, which seeded the city’s huge death toll.
Moreover, interstate travel within the US largely continued during lockdowns. OxCGRT data show that 17 US states have never stopped it since the pandemic hit.
The similar mix of viral lineages from early in the pandemic across the US indicates that reintroductions of the virus were common even in places that had eliminated an original strain.
Research combining air-travel data and genomics has concluded that the spread of COVID-19 within the US resulted more from domestic introductions than international air travel.
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