As it inches toward opening up its borders, the European Union took another step last Friday in the direction of barring American travelers from its lands on the grounds that U.S. virus mitigation efforts have failed.
But it’s too early to lay judgment on that thick. Cases are indeed climbing in a number of states — whereas they are falling or remaining stable in others. Likewise, Europe has seen spikes in various countries, with some regions slowing down reopening efforts just as Texas has done.
To complicate relative performance comparisons, death rates are much lower in current U.S. hot spots than among Europe’s power players. These could obviously change in the weeks to come, but they are worth noting. All reflect performance at some level.
The past week’s trend in the United States shows some viral resurgence, but the past three months’ trend proves much more encouraging. In prioritizing new infections as its primary metric for clearing a country’s travelers, the EU overemphasizes one sliver of the U.S. virus picture and passes over a better alternative.
Europe could maintain its priority of self-protection by encouraging member nations to enlist a testing regime specifically for incoming travelers.
Tests could be administered on arrival, even though that puts the burden of response to positive cases on the host government. Greece has decided to do this for the few travelers it has welcomed.
An upon-arrival testing strategy has a major advantage in localizing the data. Early on in this conversation about whom to let in, EU officials voiced concern about the credibility of data from other countries. Naturally, some countries have better data than others, so judging a country’s relative risk by its own data has problems. If EU nations were to test travelers on arrival, they wouldn’t have to rely on external data. They could determine each traveler’s risk by his or her own temperature and saliva.
Another option would be to test at points of departure. This kind of cooperation between airlines and governments happens already. U.S. travelers to Tel Aviv must undergo an additional security screening (aside from uniform TSA screenings) before boarding an Israel-bound flight. The EU could recommend a similar strategy for testing. If testing results cannot be determined quickly enough at the airport, governments could work with airlines to require proof of a recent negative test as a condition for boarding flights to Europe.
The EU obviously wants and needs to welcome foreign nationals into its members’ economies again. “You have to have as few new cases as we do” is not the best way to do that safely. As progressive as this illness has proven to be, it’s obvious that a decision made by that standard may have to be overturned just days later when spikes occur. What’s more, it’s surely less effective to generalize that you must be sick based on your origin when you can test passengers and know for sure. As a long-term solution, testing is much better.
