430,000 have traveled from China to U.S.
Since Chinese officials disclosed the outbreak of a mysterious pneumonialike illness to international health officials on New Year’s Eve, at least 430,000 people have arrived in the United States on direct flights from China, including nearly 40,000 in the two months after President Donald Trump imposed restrictions on such travel, according to an analysis of data collected in both countries.
The bulk of the passengers, who were of multiple nationalities, arrived in January, at airports in Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, Chicago, Seattle, Detroit and Newark, N.J. Thousands of them flew directly from Wuhan, the center of the coronavirus outbreak, as American public health officials were only beginning to assess the risks to the United States.
Flights continued this past week, the data show, with passengers traveling from Beijing to Los Angeles, San Francisco and New York, under rules that exempt Americans and some others from the clampdown that took effect Feb. 2. In all, 279 flights from China have arrived in America since then, and screening procedures have been uneven, interviews show.
Trump has repeatedly suggested that his travel measures impeded the virus’ spread in the United States. “I do think we were very early, but I also think that we were very smart, because we stopped China,” he said at a news briefing Tuesday, adding, “That was probably the biggest decision we made so far.” Last month, he said, “We’re the ones that kept China out of here.”
But analysis of the flight and other data by The New York Times shows the travel measures, however effective, may have come too late to have “kept China out,” particularly in light of recent statements from health officials that as many as 25% of people infected with the virus may never show symptoms. Many infectious-disease experts suspect that the virus had been spreading undetected for weeks after the first American case was confirmed, in Washington state on Jan. 20, and that it had continued to be introduced. In fact, no one knows when the virus first arrived in the United States.
During the first half of January, when Chinese officials were underplaying the severity of the outbreak, no travelers from China were screened for potential exposure to the virus. Health screening began in mid-january, but only for a number of travelers who had been in Wuhan and only at the airports in Los Angeles, San Francisco and New York. By that time, about 4,000 people had already entered the United States directly from Wuhan, according to VariFlight, an aviation data company based in China. The measures were expanded to all passengers from China two weeks later.
In a statement Friday, Hogan Gidley, a White House spokesman, described Trump’s travel restrictions as a “bold decisive action which medical professionals say will prove to have saved countless lives.” The policy took effect, he said, at a time when the global health community did not yet “know the level of transmission or asymptomatic spread.”
Trump administration officials have also said they received significant pushback about imposing the restrictions even when they did. At the time, the World Health Organization was not recommending travel restrictions, Chinese officials rebuffed them and some scientists questioned whether curtailing travel would do any good. Some Democrats in Congress said they could lead to discrimination.
In interviews, multiple travelers who arrived after the screening was expanded said they received only passing scrutiny, with minimal follow-up.
“I was surprised at how lax the whole process was,” said Andrew Wu, 31, who landed at Los Angeles International Airport on a flight from Beijing on March 10. “The guy I spoke to read down a list of questions, and he didn’t seem interested in checking out anything.”
Sabrina Fitch, 23, flew from China to Kennedy International Airport in New York on March 23. She and the 40 or so other passengers had their temperature taken twice while en route and were required to fill out forms about their travels and health, she said.
“Besides looking at our passports, they didn’t question us like we normally are questioned,” said Fitch, who had been teaching English in China. “So it was kind of weird, because everyone expected the opposite, where you get a lot of questions. But once we filled out the little health form, no one really cared.”
In January, before the broad screening was in place, there were over 1,300 direct passenger flights from China to the United States, according to Variflight and two American firms, MyRadar and Flightaware. About 381,000 travelers flew directly from China to the United States that month, about a quarter of whom were American, according to data from the Department of Commerce’s International Trade Administration.
In addition, untold others arrived from China on itinpeople eraries that first stopped in another country. While actual passenger counts for indirect flyers were not available, Sofia Boza-holman, a spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security, said they represented about a quarter of travelers from China. The restrictions, she added, reduced all passengers from the country by about 99%.
Trump issued his first travel restrictions related to the virus on Jan. 31, one day after the World Health Organization declared the outbreak a global health emergency. In a presidential proclamation, he barred foreign nationals from entering the country if they had been in China during the prior two weeks. The order exempted U.S. citizens, green-card holders and their noncitizen relatives — exceptions roundly recognized as necessary to allow residents to return home and prevent families from being separated. It did not apply to flights from Hong Kong and Macao.
About 60% of travelers on direct flights from China in February were not U.S. citizens, according to the most recently available government data. Most of the flights were operated by Chinese airlines after U.S. carriers halted theirs.
At a news conference about the restrictions, Alex Azar, the health secretary, repeatedly emphasized that “the risk is low” for Americans. He added, “Our job is to work to keep that that way.”