Trump issues quarantine order over China virus
Major travel restrictions set to be put in place Sunday
WASHINGTON — The Trump administration on Friday dramatically escalated its response to the fast spreading coronavirus epidemic by announcing quarantines and major travel restrictions that officials said were meant to limit contagion.
The measures, which could affect thousands of people around the world, represented a marked expansion of the federal government’s response after initially downplaying potential risks.
The White House declared a “public health emergency” and — beginning at 5 p.m. Sunday — will bar non-U.S. citizens who recently visited China from entering the United States, subject to a few exemptions. Shortly after the White House announced the new restrictions and said there were six confirmed U.S. cases, a seventh case was confirmed in Santa Clara County, Calif.
Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar also said the Trump administration would quarantine any
Americans who visited the Hubei province of China within the past 14 days, where the disease originated. The government will also require screening and self-quarantines for all other Americans who recently visited any other parts of China. Officials said the self-quarantine rules would require individuals to stay in their homes for a certain length of time, monitor themselves for certain symptoms such as coughing, and check their temperature and report that to local health officials.
The new travel and quarantine measures, which appeared to be unprecedented on such a scale, were part of a rapidly evolving international response to the growing health scare. For the first time Friday, U.S. officials acknowledged that screening tests for coronavirus are not always accurate and that people with no symptoms can transmit the virus. New cases were reported Friday in the United Kingdom and Russia, and Canada announced its fourth case later in the day.
“This is a serious health situation in China, but I want to emphasize that the risk to the American public currently is low,” said Robert Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “Our goal is to do all we can do to keep it that way.”
“Right now, there’s a lot of unknowns,” he added later. White House officials said the new restrictions would be temporary but did not say when they might be lifted. Meanwhile, major U.S. airlines that travel to China — American Airlines, United Airlines and Delta Air Lines — announced they were suspending their flights to the country, in some cases until late March. The duration of these cancellations showed how governments and businesses are now preparing for much longer-term interruptions than initially thought, raising the possibility that there could be a sizable impact on the global economy. Many Chinese businesses remain closed, and China is a top trading partner of a number of countries throughout the world.
These announcements helped send the U.S. stock market sharply lower, with the Dow Jones industrial average falling Friday by a dramatic 600 points, or more than 2 percent.
At a hastily arranged afternoon press briefing, White House officials stressed that they believed there was little risk to the U.S. public from the coronavirus and that the measures were an attempt to keep it that way. But their comments also revealed how rapidly the process is evolving.
Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said that the process for testing people for the new strain of coronavirus had proven very imprecise so far and that this is one of the reasons for the aggressive U.S. response. He said there was evidence that people who initially tested negative for the virus actually had contracted it. Officials also believe that at least one person, in Germany, has obtained the virus from someone who didn’t exempt any symptoms. These developments have caused the U.S. government to markedly escalate their response.
“We still have a low risk to the American public, but we want to keep it at a low risk,” Fauci said, adding that there “are so many unknowns here.”
Ken Cuccinelli, acting director of the Citizenship and Immigration Services, said American travelers coming from China would be funneled through seven major airports to ensure they can be screened.