Originally Posted by
helvetic
Of course they're not keen. Nobody's keen on having anyone come to their community from outside right now. Xenophobia is shooting up through the roof everywhere.
I think there's a lot of that. I was on a tour in Bolivia that got cut short and our options for getting home (4 of us, all US citizens) dwindled as country after country closed its borders, even to transiting passengers. Bolivia had something like 20 COVID-19 cases as of yesterday so it's not exactly a hotbed of infection. The tour company booked us on the only flight (that I'm aware of) directly from Bolivia to the US- Boliviana Airlines from Santa Cruz to Miami. That was this past Wednesday; Bolivia has now closed its borders and the last flight to Miami was Thursday.
When I think about it, passengers from elsewhere are a "hot potato" that no country wants. Many are on limited budgets and can't afford to be quarantined. Some will get sick and may be a drain on already-stretched country resources, not to mention an addition to the ever-important count of cases. A few airports had considered "sequestering" transiting passengers but that carried its own risks of disease transmission and sheer logistics,
No easy answers.