First the numbers: India has crossed the 200,000 mark, adding 9,304 cases on Wednesday. The good news: our growth rate is slowing down—mainly because the number of new cases in Maharashtra have slowed over the past two weeks. Its contribution to the national total has dipped as well. Point to note: our numbers doubled from 100,000 to 200,000 in 15 days.
The TLDR: As nations across the world emerge from lockdown, many are considering travel bubbles to help save aviation, tourism and international business. But it is unlikely that India will be part of one anytime soon.
What’s a bubble, anyway?
A bubble, in essence, isolates a given set of people from the rest of the population.
How does a travel bubble work?
The first order of business is to start doing business. This in turn requires finding a way to make international travel safe. Governments, therefore, are planning to open their borders, but only to nations that appear to have beaten back the virus. These are also called travel bridges or corona corridors.
Here’s how it works: People can travel freely inside these bubbles without any need for a quarantine. But they have to prove that they have not travelled outside the bubble for at least 14 days. And they have to be tested and prove that they have not had contact with an infected person.
Are there such bubbles already?
Only a few right now. But many more such zones will be created in the coming months:
Also under development: a “safe-travel protocol” being developed by a Stanford researcher in cooperation with Taiwan. The aim: to reduce the number of required days of post-travel quarantine. Lead researcher Jason Wang says, “If we can prove that you only need to be quarantined for three days—that’s a beautiful thing, not only for business, but for summer tourism.”
What about India?
It is unlikely anyone will enter into a bubble with India for now. And there are two good reasons why.
One: Our numbers are still rising even as the rest of Europe and Asia appears to have stemmed the tide. Travel bubbles typically exist between nations that have very low or negligible number of cases. For example: NZ and Australia. No one wants to risk bringing the virus back into their country.
Two: Nations are also likely to enter into bubbles if they have similar—and strict—pandemic policies and roughly the same Covid numbers. Unfortunately, our testing rate is still very low—which means no other nation can trust our numbers. And we don’t have a strong contact tracing program in place either—which is how South Korea brought its numbers down.
But that hasn’t prevented some of us from fantasising about a South Asian bubble (minus Pakistan, of course) that includes Bangladesh, Sri Lanka etc. But even this is unlikely given our current Covid count.
So when can I fly freely again?
Well, India first has to open its borders. According to the latest Unlock plan, international travel is expected to resume in a few months. And if it does, you can still fly to countries—say, Greece—that have opened their borders to everybody. But even if you test negative at the airport, you will have to stay in quarantine for seven days. If you test positive, then you’re under hotel arrest for 14.
Point to note: UK citizens are already free to holiday at will. But they have to stay in quarantine for 14 days when they come back. It is very likely that the Indian government will have a similar requirement when it does open up our borders.
The bottomline: For now, any plan of phoren travel appears remote. So we better learn to love Zoom and plan holidays closer to home. Be Vocal, Travel Local.
The reading list
The Smithsonian has the most comprehensive piece on travel bubbles. The Economist analyses the effect of the world splintering into travel zones on the world economy. More details on the Stanford study are on the university website. Indian Express has the India angle.
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