COVID-19 and the State of Global Mobility in 2021

The International Organization for Migration (IOM) has been monitoring the operational status of points of entry and travel restrictions and measures since March 2020, publicly availing this data on its COVID-19 Mobility Impacts platform since May 2020. IOM and the Migration Policy Institute (MPI) have been collaborating to analyse these data, on an annual basis, to ascertain the impact of COVID-19 on cross-border mobility of all forms over time.
 
The sheer volume of rules in play—over 100,000 as of the end of 2021—continues to pose a distressing effect on cross-border mobility. It is striking that this picture has remained largely unchanged in the face of huge changes in the epidemiological situation across the course of 2021, with peaks and troughs in the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases globally and within countries driven by variant-related outbreaks as well as rising vaccination rates.