Trump decides against 2-week lockdown in NY

Move after warning from gov

Washington, March 29: US President Donald Trump decided late Saturday against imposing a broad two-week lockdown on New York and its neighbors after a strong pushback from local political leaders and warnings of the panic it could spark.

The Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), however, late Saturday advised residents of the region not to travel except for essential purposes.

“A quarantine will not be necessary,” Mr Trump tweeted, about eight hours after he stunned the New York region, the epicentre of the US outbreak, with a proposal to place it under quarantine to prevent residents from leaving. A lockdown of that type would have been the harshest measure yet taken by the US government to slow the spread of the disease.

Mr Trump had indicated earlier that he was responding to worries in other states, particularly Florida, that travellers from the greater New York City area could spread Covid-19 in their communities.

He said that “heavily infected” New Yorkers were a threat to Florida, a popular southern holiday destination for people in the northeast.

But after strong warnings from New York governor Andrew Cuomo and New Jersey governor Ned Lamont that the move would spark panic and cause further damage to financial markets, Mr Trump reversed course and said there would only be travel warnings for the region.

2,010 deaths reported in the US with 121,000 +ve cases

New York, March 29: As Covid-19 cases rose in the national epicentre of New York, President Donald Trump surprised governors of the state and neighbouring New Jersey and Connecticut by saying Saturday that he might impose a quarantine on their residents before tweeting later in the day that a travel advisory was the way to go.

Trump’s comments about a quarantine led New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo to call it illegal and “a federal declaration of war.” The travel advisory urges residents of the three states to avoid all but essential travel for two weeks.

Meanwhile, Cuomo postponed New York’s presidential primary from April to June, and nurses made anguished pleas for more protective equipment and rebuffed officials’ claims that supplies are adequate. With New York cases expected to mushroom toward a mid-to-late-April peak, Cuomo took a manual-pump air mask in hand to show what might lie in store if needed ventilators don’t arrive.

Trump told reporters at the White House he was weighing the idea of a quarantine to prevent people in the tri-state area from travelling for a short time. Late Saturday, though, he tweeted that he’d decided to go with a travel advisory. The travel advisory urges residents of New York, New Jersey and Connecticut to immediately avoid any nonessential travel for two weeks. All 50 US states have reported some cases of the virus, but New York has the most, with over 52,000 positive tests and more than 700 deaths. About 7,300 people were in New York hospitals Saturday.

The federal government has the power to take measures to prevent the spread of communicable diseases, but it’s not clear whether that means Trump can order people not to leave their states. He cited requests from Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a fellow Republican and outspoken Trump supporter who has complained about New Yorkers coming to his state amid the outbreak and ordered them to isolate on arrival for 14 days.

Washington, March 29: The US government’s foremost infection disease expert says the United States could experience over 100,000 deaths and millions

of infections from the Covid-19 pandemic.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, speaking on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday, offered his prognosis as

the federal government weighs rolling back guidelines on social distancing in areas that have not been hard-hit by the outbreak at the conclusion of the nationwide

15-day effort to slow the spread of the virus. “I would say between 100,000 and 200,000 cases,” he said, correcting himself to say he meant deaths.

“We’re going to have millions of cases.” But he added “I don’t want to be held to that” because the pandemic is “such a moving target.”

— AFP People take their daily exercise as they cross the Wilford Suspension Bridge over the River Trent in Nottingham, on Sunday, as life in Britain continues during the nationwide lockdown to combat the novel Covid-19 pandemic.