Abstract
At the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, countries responded in a range of ways. Our new research reveals that those that put in place explicit exclusion/elimination strategies achieved dramatically lower Covid-19 mortality during the critical 2020-21 period.
These jurisdictions recorded negative excess mortality—fewer deaths than expected based on previous years—with -2.1 deaths per 100,000 population, compared with 166.5 per 100,000 in other jurisdictions. In particular, island jurisdictions with stringent border restrictions experienced substantially better outcomes than non-islands.
Crucially, we found no consistent evidence that stringent border restrictions harmed economic growth compared to jurisdictions with less stringent restrictions. This finding challenges widespread assumptions about inevitable trade-offs between health and the economy.