New coronavirus case of unknown origin in California
WASHINGTON, (Reuters) - The United States will invoke a federal defense law to boost production of masks, gloves, gowns and other items to protect against the new coronavirus, the Trump administration said, as a new case of unknown origin was confirmed in California yesterday.
The latest U.S. case was reported in Santa Clara county in California, home to the Silicon Valley technology hub. County health officials said it was a case of unknown origin, the second in the state so far out of 10 cases there.
Around the world, more countries are reporting new infections, companies have curtailed travel and global stock markets continued to tumble.
“We will use the Defense Production Act as necessary to enable that our contracts go to the front of the line,” U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said in a briefing at the White House. “That is an authority that we have, and we will use it to acquire anything we need to acquire.”
The United States will make a decision “very soon” about whether to bar entry to travelers from the countries with the most cases of the new coronavirus, President Donald Trump said at the White House on Friday as his administration came under fire from political opponents for its response to the outbreak.
At a rally in South Carolina on Friday night, Trump defended his administration’s response to the coronavirus outbreak and accused Democrats of politicizing the disease.
“This is their new hoax,” Trump said at the event, held a day before the state’s Democratic presidential primary.
The U.S. State Department has issued travel advisories for several nations and on Friday it said Americans should reconsider travel to Italy, where nearly 900 coronavirus cases have been confirmed. A similar warning was issued earlier this week for South Korea, which has hundreds of infections.
A government task force appointed by Trump to deal with the threat will meet at the White House on Saturday morning, according to an administration official.
The number of confirmed U.S. cases of the respiratory disease is still relatively small at 62, most of them repatriated American passengers from the Diamond Princess cruise ship docked in Japan, but there are growing fears that the country is on the cusp of wider outbreak.
“In every case, people are being treated and by all accounts are doing well,” Vice President Mike Pence, who has been tapped to lead the government’s coronavirus response, said on Friday during a live-streamed news conference.
Latest figures from China, where the outbreak started late last year, indicated that nearly 80,000 people have been infected, with more than 2,800 deaths. The World Health Organization reported 57 deaths in 46 other countries.
Anthony Fauci, a doctor who heads the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said in a closed-door briefing in the U.S. House of Representatives that the
sustained spread of the coronavirus meant there would be many more infections in the United States, according to a source.
Fauci warned lawmakers the country did not have enough testing resources, the source said on condition of anonymity. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said it has revised its criteria for who should be tested and is ramping up testing capabilities.
“Our goal is to have every state and local health department online and doing their own testing by the end of next week,” CDC official Nancy Messonier told reporters.
A vaccine may take up to 18 months to develop, health officials have said.
The United States has decided to postpone a meeting with leaders of Southeast Asian countries it had planned to host on March 14 in Las Vegas because of worries about the outbreak.
U.S. and global stocks plummeted as rattled investors braced for the prospect that a pandemic could further dent an already slowing world economy.