In the post-COVID-19 world, the response of countries to the global pandemic continues to be closely studied for an assessment of the effectiveness of mobility restrictions and other public health-related measures and what the approaches might mean for future public health crises. China, with a “zero COVID” policy that was far more stringent and for far longer than other countries, stands out as a particular case, also not least because other governments around the world imposed nationality-specific travel measures on Chinese travelers. Why did China shut its borders so quickly, so tightly, and for so long? How has China fared over the longer term? How did other countries in the Asia Pacific react? And what does this all portend for future public health crises in the region? In this episode, Lawrence Huang, who is working on MPI’s Task Force on Borders and Mobility During and After COVID-19, discusses developments in the Asia Pacific with Dr. Karen Grépin, a health policy professor at the University of Hong Kong.

Digital health credentialing is one of the main tools to safely return to pre-pandemic levels of mobility and plan for the next public health crisis. Digital innovations—including automatic verification of health and vaccination results—are reopening economies and global mobility while setting the standard for new ways of managing mobility and health that will outlast the pandemic, especially in regions that had lower levels of digital use and more limited health and border management systems. Notably, India’s DIVOC system and the African Union Trusted Traveler system are examples of how the pandemic fueled large-scale innovation in this regard. In this episode, we discuss these developments with Dr. Pramod Varma, chief architect of India's digital identity program, Aadhar, and of its COVID pass system, DIVOC; Dr. Edem Adzogenu, co-chair and founder of the Afro Champions Initiative, which supports regional integration and implementation of the African Continental Free Trade Agreement; and Lawrence Huang, a Migration Policy institute (MPI) associate policy analyst working on its Task Force on Borders and Mobility During and After COVID-19.

The COVID-19 pandemic has had a dramatic effect on the corporate sector, disrupting operations, ushering in changed thinking about the office environment, and chilling business travel. How has the business world responded? And in what way are COVID-19 protocols, new innovations, and trends in working practices affecting the decisions that companies make about the mobility of their workforce? In this episode, we speak with two former government officials who are now in the private sector—Ian Robinson of the immigration law firm Fragomen and Brendan Ryan, CEO of Nomadic, which provides digital solutions for corporate travel—about the trends and policy environment shaping business mobility decisions, whether the rise of the Omicron variant might scupper plans to restart travel, and whether the rise of digital nomad visas represent a fad or permanent shift.