SURREY, B.C.—If living near the epicentre of the worst COVID-19 outbreak in North America has been surreal to Rebecca Schwartz, making it across the border to Canada was a carefully calculated call.

“My mom is having surgery (in B.C.) — it’s not scheduled yet,” she said after driving from Seattle, Wash., with companion Colin Oswin on Tuesday.

“Even before the prime minister announced travel restrictions, I was anticipating they would close this border.”

Schwartz spoke to The Star Tuesday from the Peace Arch border crossing — the crossing on the most direct route between Seattle and Vancouver. Less than 24 hours later, Canadian and American officials announced border crossings would be closed to all “non-essential” travel as the battle against the pandemic goes on.

It’s the move British Columbia said it wanted. As provincial officials announced 83 new cases and three additional deaths Tuesday, they also repeated calls to limit travel from the U.S., particularly through land crossings where every day roughly 18,000 cars come into B.C. from Washington state — the state worst hit by the outbreak.

Schwartz and Oswin know they’ll have to self-isolate for 14 days in Canada, but that’s worth it to know they won’t end up on the other side of the border from Schwartz’s mother.

They’ve watched how quickly the outbreak has disrupted the world around them. One day everyone is working and going to yoga, the next day everything is closed.

“It’s surreal; it’s like tumbleweed blowing in the street,” Oswin said.

Washington state had the first community outbreak of COVID-19 in North America — at the Life Care Centre nursing home in the Seattle suburb of Kirkland — and has more than 1,000 confirmed cases of the disease, with more than 50 deaths.

That’s why, earlier this week, when the prime minister announced restrictions on entries by foreign nationals but initially left the border open to Americans, B.C. leaders were quick to say that’s not what they wanted to hear.

“Don’t come,” B.C. Health Minister Adrian Dix said Monday, two days before the halt to “non-essential” travel was announced.

“We have an interconnected economy, interconnected services and goods that move across our borders all the time — some of the essential goods that we need right now move across that border,” provincial health officer Dr. Bonnie Henry said.

“What we are requesting and what I agree with is that the border be closed to visitors — people who are coming across the border to visit B.C.”

Tom Koch, an epidemic expert at the University of British Columbia’s geography department, said there are good reasons for maintaining flow through U.S.-Canada border crossings, including for cargo and to process returning Canadians, both of which will be allowed to continue.

“Canada-U.S. borders are distinct from all others given the physical proximity and the close exchanges between both countries,” Koch said. “So full closure, unless where it is made exigent, would be politically and economically difficult.”

Since many of Washington’s cases are within care homes, he said, it’s not clear community spread of the disease has become “overwhelming” in the state as it has in, for example, Italy.

And it’s likely public health warnings to avoid travel had also already decreased traffic into Canada, he said.

The Canada Border Services Agency on Tuesday said it could not provide any information on the flow of people through Canada-U.S. borders until next week due to a large volume of requests for information.

But at the Peace Arch border crossing in Surrey, one of the country’s busiest land border crossings, there were only two lanes of cars lined up to enter Canada on Tuesday, with no more than three cars in each lane at a time.

Most of the cars entering had B.C. licence plates marking Canadian citizens and residents coming home.

And travellers from the U.S., like Schwartz and Oswin, said they weren’t coming in for travel, but to reunite with family.

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Jeff St. Mary from Ridgefield, Wash., got a call from his daughter, Rebecca, who studies at UBC in Vancouver this week. She asked for a ride home in case travel restrictions between the countries ramp up, so he drove to the border.

“Washington is the worst in the whole country,” for coronavirus, St. Mary said after crossing the border.

“We normally stop to have dinner when we do this drive at a restaurant or hotel — not today. Especially the Seattle area — you just don’t know how many cases are really out there.”

He doesn’t think the U.S. or Canada should close their borders though.

“There are so many who need to go back and forth,” he said.

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