So far, Australia has recorded fewer than 7,000 confirmed cases of COVID-19, with fewer than 100 deaths and downward-trending numbers. The country’s chief medical officer credits Australia’s rather aggressive response to the pandemic; they closed their borders in and out, with Australians returning from outside the country put into a mandatory quarantine for two weeks in co-opted hotels. The country’s government also banned gatherings and conducted large-scale testing around the country.
New Zealand had fewer than 1,500 infections as of April 24, with only 17 deaths, and is now seeing fewer than one new case a day. (For comparison, Colorado, which is of a similar size and population, has 11,000 confirmed cases and over 550 deaths). The country shut its borders early, before the first death occurred there; mandated stay-at-home measures; and closed most businesses. They followed up with the most expansive testing program in the world, checking more than 2% of the entire population.
Now, with the disease strongly on the decline in both countries, leaders there are cautiously looking at allowing travel again—but only to one another.
“If there is any country in the world with whom we can reconnect with first, undoubtedly that’s New Zealand,” said Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison. Morrison says that he and Jacinda Ardern, the Prime Minister of New Zealand, have been talking about forming a “travel bubble” between the two countries, helping to stimulate the economies of both with limited tourism and the first steps of a return to normal.
The concept of travel bubbles could work well at smaller scales to ease into re-opening as well. Two cities at similar points on the recovery curve, for instance, could more safely interact that a city with rising infection rates and one with falling. Even at the household level, choosing one other household to visit, and keeping those bubbles exclusive, can be done in relative safety.
There are even places in the U.S. that have their own travel bubbles. Take the Florida Keys, for example: since March 22, Monroe County, which includes the islands that form the Keys, has had two checkpoints at the top of the Florida Keys Overseas Highway, and only people who can prove that they own or rent property and work in the Keys have been allowed in.
On Peaks Island in Maine’s Casco Bay, which is only accessible by ferry—locals have asked city leaders to encourage people only to take essential trips to the island. Residents fear that the island could be mobbed with travelers over Memorial Day weekend, the traditional start of Maine’s tourist season. But the situation is complicated, as Randy Schaeffer, chair of the Peaks Island Council (an advisory group, not a legislative body), told the Chicago Tribune.
“It’s a very conflicted situation with the community needing the business that comes with visitors but also needing to prioritize everyone’s health,” he said of the concept of a travel bubble on the island. “People might want something like a bubble, but we don’t have the legal power to do that and it is highly unlikely that we would be able to keep people from coming here.”
Photo: Hoho Rock at sunrise, Cathedral Cove, Coromandel Peninsula, New Zealand. Credit: Shutterstock