U.S. put on high alert over new virus
Travel curbs set; evacuees isolated
WASHINGTON — The federal government on Friday declared a public-health emergency in response to the fast-spreading coronavirus epidemic, announcing quarantines and travel restrictions.
Among those affected are nearly 200 Americans evacuated from China because of the new virus. They had been expecting to spend about three days at a Southern California military base after they returned to the U.S., but they now have been quarantined there for two weeks.
Officials said the new federal measures, which could affect thousands of people around the world, were meant to limit contagion. Short- ly 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.
The public-health emergency declaration also gives the government more resources and flexibility to respond to the outbreak.
Beginning at 4 p.m. Sunday CST, the U.S. will bar non-U.S. citizens who recently visited China from entering the United States, subject to a few exemptions.
In addition, any Americans returning to the U.S. from Hubei province — which includes Wuhan, the Chinese city at the center of the outbreak — will be quarantined for two weeks. Health officials believe it
can take up to two weeks for the infected to get sick.
Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said the government also would 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 people 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 health officials.
White House officials said the new restrictions would be temporary but did not say when they might be lifted.
Matthew McCoy, a theme park designer who lives in China, is among the 195 Americans who were evacuated on a charter flight earlier this week from Wuhan. He said he is “very relieved” that they are all quarantined at March Air Reserve Base in Riverside, Calif., for two weeks.
“All of us really want to stay here and make sure we’re all medically clear and the public safe,” McCoy said.
Other evacuees include U.S. government employees and their families.
The quarantine is the first such federal order since 1963, when a woman was quarantined after she returned from a trip to Sweden during a smallpox outbreak, and she could not prove that she had been vaccinated.
“We understand this action may seem drastic. We would rather be remembered for overreacting than under-reacting,” said Dr. Nancy Messonnier of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The Arkansas Department of Health said this week that it is investigating a possible case of the coronavirus in a person who became ill after returning from China. The department on Friday had not yet received results from respiratory and blood serum samples sent to a CDC laboratory to determine whether the illness was caused by the virus, spokesman Meg Mirivel said.
At the military base about 60 miles east of Los Angeles, the evacuees are staying in hotel-style housing and have spent time walking and exercising — some wearing masks, said Jose Arballo Jr., a spokesman for the county’s public-health agency.
As of Friday, none of the evacuees had shown signs of illness, he said. The CDC said test results are still returning for the group; all have been negative so far.
One person tried to leave the base Wednesday night and was quarantined by the county. The CDC’s Dr. Martin Cetron on Friday said that incident did not drive the decision for the federal quarantine.
The State Department is planning more flights to get Americans out of Wuhan.
Ken Cuccinelli, acting director of Citizenship and Immigration Services, said American travelers returning from China would be funneled through seven major airports to ensure they can be screened. Those airports are in New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Seattle, Atlanta, Honolulu and Los Angeles.
INACCURATE TESTS
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.
Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said those were among the reasons for the escalated U.S. response. Officials believe that at least one person, in Germany, contracted the virus from someone who didn’t exhibit any symptoms.
“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.”
New cases were reported Friday in the United Kingdom and Russia, and Canada announced its fourth case.
China, the hardest hit, has reported that 259 people have died from the virus, and that nearly 11,800 are infected.
“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 CDC. “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.
While many public-health experts praised the administration’s decision to declare an emergency, others said that several of the administration’s actions on Friday were extreme.
“These are extraordinary measures to be implemented at this point,” Ali Khan, former director of the Office of Public Health Preparedness and Response at the CDC, said of restricting foreigners. “We’re a global economy, people move and if you have excellent public health and you are able to combine port of entry screening with follow-up of people, there should be no reason to put undue burdens on people around travel.”
Major U.S. airlines that travel to China — American Airlines, United and Delta — announced that 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.
President Donald Trump has remained largely muted on the coronavirus. On Wednesday, he tweeted out photos of his Situation Room briefing and said his administration was working closely with China to contain the outbreak.
Information for this article was contributed by Amy Taxin, Robert Jablon, Mike Stobbe and staff members of The Associated Press; by Erica Werner, Yasmeen Abutaleb, Lenny Bernstein, Lena H. Sun and Jeff Stein of The Washington Post; and by Andy Davis of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.