Tracking COVID-19 Restrictions by Country Using an Interactive Tool

Skyscanner develops an interactive tool that provides travelers with information regarding the different travel restrictions per country.

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought about a multitude of travel restrictions all around the world to contain the transmission of the deadly virus. Americans are now peppered with so many travel-abroad regulations due to the rapid—and seemingly unending—increase in cases. If you plan to make a trip abroad, it can be difficult to obtain relevant and up-to-date information on the specific travel requirements for either your state of origin or your intended destination. This is because these requirements are regularly updated and modified depending on the COVID-19 situation at the moment.

More and more countries, however, are providing detailed travel restrictions and monitoring tools. Skyscanner’s interactive COVID-19 travel map is, by far, one of the most sophisticated ones. The tool is in its beta version and can be perused via Skyscanner’s website. The map can be used to check the different travel restrictions of the different countries represented. Countries are color-coded, displaying those with low, moderate, and heavy travel restrictions which are in green, yellow, and red, respectively. Countries that do not have data, however, are colored gray. A user’s specific country of origin is colored gray, as well, during a search.

You can click through the different destinations. You can also scroll through the list of suggested destinations provided. By doing so, you can find out about the travel restrictions per country and even check the latest updates in terms of current COVID-19 cases, the rate of transmission, the difference in case numbers as compared to the previous week, and so on. You are also offered the option to sign up for email notifications as regards succeeding COVID-19 updates regarding a particular country.

The said Skyscanner tool was introduced in November. It makes use of data obtained from the International Air Transport Association (IATA) for the updates on travel restrictions plus COVID-19 case rates from the John Hopkins University.

The tool is an initiative that resulted from Skyscanner’s American survey as regards attitudes toward the different travel restrictions imposed which prevented easy trips locally and internationally. Out of the 1,000 respondents, about 51% mentioned that they did not have adequate confidence on the knowledge they had about the travel restrictions of the places they wanted to visit. Despite this fact, many Americans have been found to be browsing through international airfare.

“People want to travel and we know there is pent-up demand from the searches we are seeing for flights and for more information; but confidence has been hit by the lack of consistency between countries worldwide regarding measures and restrictions,” shares U.S. travel expert for Skyscanner, Mark Crossey. “Consumers just don’t understand the complex rules and are crying out for transparent, detailed information,” Crossey adds.

Crossey points out, however, that there are only a few countries that offer quarantine-free visits. At the moment, merely 13 countries are indicated as green. 212 countries are colored orange or even red. He asserts that the Skyscanner tool is only a piece of the solution. Countries all over the world must have a standard set of travel restrictions including testing protocols and quarantine procedures before travelling can become easier.