

People have their temperature taken at the entrance of Canton Fair in Guangzhou, Guangdong province, China, on Oct. 26. (Alex Lee/Reuters)

Fears about the spread of Ebola have driven many countries to restrict incoming travelers from abroad. In Russia, those same fears are being given as an official reason why Russians shouldn't leave home.

The head of Russia’s main health watchdog agency recommended Thursday that Russians should forego vacations and other travel over the winter holidays so as not to expose themselves to infection during the global Ebola crisis.

“These holidays would be better spent in Russia,” said Anna Popova, head of the agency. “Given the unstable situation in the world for infectious diseases, it is recommended to reduce all possible travel and vacation abroad.”

Many countries have advised their populations to avoid all non-essential travel to countries that have been particularly hard-hit in the Ebola crisis, such as Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.

But Popova’s blanket recommendation against all foreign travel comes at a time when Russia is making several moves to isolate itself from the West, either by directly restricting or by subtly pressuring certain groups of citizens from going to countries that have sanctioned Russia in the past several months.

In April, shortly after the United States sanctioned Russia over its annexation of Crimea, the Russian government decided to ban nearly all foreign travel for several million employees of the federal government who work in agencies dealing with various aspects of national security. That same month, Russia’s foreign ministry also warned citizens “about the possibility of being detained or arrested” if they traveled abroad, because U.S. law enforcement agencies were actively “hunting” for Russians in other countries to convict in the United States on “usually dubious charges.”

This month, Russian parliamentarians were asked to surrender their diplomatic passports to administrative authorities between official trips, which will likely reduce those individuals' foreign travel.

The changes have given rise to various worried rumors among Russians that their government may eventually adopt the sort of exit visa requirements and travel restrictions that were employed during the Soviet Union. Tourism experts report that the number of Russians traveling abroad is already falling – a phenomenon partly fueled by the fact that over the summer, several Russian tour companies, squeezed by rising political tensions and a weakening ruble, declared bankruptcy, causing many Russians to opt to stay at home.

In 2012, Russia’s tourism agency recorded that Russians took almost 48 million trips abroad, about 15 million of which were for tourism. But according to a poll from March of this year, only 17 percent of Russians hold a passport for foreign travel, and 70 percent of Russians have never been outside the country.

As for Ebola, Russia has yet to report a single case in-country, despite unofficial predictions that the disease might arrive by late October. Popova’s agency has been developing and testing a vaccine to combat the virus for the past few months, and alerting residents through near-daily statements to the media that Russia is fully prepared to handle any cases that might arise.

Ebola is highly fatal, but not communicable unless one is exposed to the bodily fluids of an infected person.