DOI: 10.5683/sp2/5e4oa8
title: Dataset 1: Bilateral Travel Restriction Database v1.0

description: Earlier this year, Dr. Hoffman and Dr. Fafard published a book chapter on the efficacy and legality of border closures enacted by governments in response to changing COVID-19 conditions. The authors concluded border closures are at best, regarded as powerful symbolic acts taken by governments to show they are acting forcefully, even if the actions lack an epidemiological impact and breach international law. This COVID-19 travel restriction project was developed out of a necessity and desire to further examine the empirical implications of border closures. The current dataset contains bilateral travel restriction information on the status of 179 countries between 1 January 2020 and 8 June 2020. The data was extracted from the ‘international controls’ column from the Oxford COVID-19 Government Response Tracker (OxCGRT). The data in the ‘international controls’ column outlined a country’s change in border control status, as a response to COVID-19 conditions. Accompanying source links were further verified through random selection and comparison with external news sources. Greater weight is given to official national government sources, then to provincial and municipal news-affiliated agencies. The database is presented in matrix form for each country-pair and date. Subsequently, each cell is represented by datum Xdmn and indicates the border closure status on date d by country m on country n. The coding is as follows: no border closure (code = 0), targeted border closure (= 1), and a total border closure (= 99). The dataset provides further details in the ‘notes’ column if the type of closure is a modified form of a targeted closure, either as a land or port closure, flight or visa suspension, or a re-opening of borders to select countries. Visa suspensions and closure of land borders were coded separately as de facto border closures and analyzed as targeted border closures in quantitative analyses. The file titled ‘BTR Supplementary Information’ covers a multitude of supplemental details to the database. The various tabs cover the following: 1) Codebook: variable name, format, source links, and description; 2) Sources, Access dates: dates of access for the individual source links with additional notes; 3) Country groups: breakdown of EEA, EU, SADC, Schengen groups with source links; 4) Newly added sources: for missing countries with a population greater than 1 million (meeting the inclusion criteria), relevant news sources were added for analysis; 5) Corrections: external news sources correcting for errors in the coding of international controls retrieved from the OxCGRT dataset. At the time of our study inception, there was no existing dataset which recorded the bilateral decisions of travel restrictions between countries. We hope this dataset will be useful in the study of the impact of border closures in the COVID-19 pandemic and widen the capabilities of studying border closures on a global scale, due to its interconnected nature and impact, rather than being limited in analysis to a single country or region only. Statement of contributions: Data entry and verification was performed mainly by GL, with assistance from MJP and RN. MP and IW provided further data verification on the nine countries purposively selected for the exploratory analysis of political decision-making.