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 In addition, U.S. citizens who have traveled within the past two
weeks to China's Hubei Province - epicenter of the coronavirus
epidemic - will be subject to a mandatory quarantine of 14 days, the
incubation period of the virus, officials said.
Americans who visited other parts of mainland China will undergo
special health screening upon their return, followed by up to 14
days of "monitored self-quarantine," under the temporary
restrictions.
The emergency measures were unveiled by U.S. Health and Human
Services Secretary Alex Azar at a White House briefing, shortly
before the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and
local health authorities announced a seventh U.S. coronavirus case
had been confirmed in Northern California.
The latest U.S. patient was identified only as a man in Santa Clara
County, south of San Francisco, who became ill after traveling to
China and has "self-isolated" at home, Sara Cody, director of public
health for the county, told reporters.
She said the CDC was seeking to determine whether the man was
infectious while flying home.
The U.S. entry ban on foreign travelers to China and the quarantine
for Americans returning from Hubei go into effect on Sunday at 5
p.m. EST (2200 GMT), Azar said.
At the same time all commercial flights from China would be
restricted to international U.S. airports in one of seven cities -
New York, Chicago, Atlanta, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle and
Honolulu.
An average of more than 14,000 people traveled by air to the United
States from China each day last year, either by direct or indirect
flights, according to the White House.
KEEPING RISK LOW
CDC Director Robert Redfield told reporters the U.S. government
acted after the World Health Organization declared a global health
emergency on Thursday over the spread of the respiratory disease.
"I want to emphasize that this is a serious health situation in
China, but I want to emphasize that the risk to the American public
is currently low," Redfield said. "Our goal is to do all we can do
to keep it that way."
The U.S. State Department warned Americans on Thursday not to travel
to China because of the epidemic.
The ban on U.S. entry of foreign nationals who have traveled to
China during the past 14 days would exempt immediate family of U.S.
citizens and permanent U.S. residents, Azar said.
The suspension-of-entry proclamation, signed by President Donald
Trump, says the ban stays in effect until the president lifts it,
and that the HHS secretary will recommend every 15 days whether to
do so.
The flu-like coronavirus, which is believed to have originated in a
seafood and animal market in Wuhan, the provincial capital of Hubei,
and was first identified earlier this month, has resulted in 259
deaths in China.
More than 11,700 people have been infected in China, and more than
130 cases reported in at least 25 other countries and regions, with
Russia, Britain, Sweden and Italy all reporting their first cases on
Thursday or Friday.
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None of the U.S. cases has been fatal, and all but one of the
patients in the United States was believed to have contracted the
disease while they were traveling in the Wuhan area of China.
FIRST U.S. QUARANTINES
The first quarantines of U.S. citizens potentially exposed to
coronavirus in China began hours before the White House
announcement.
Nearly 200 Americans evacuated earlier this week from Wuhan and
voluntarily confined to a California military air base for 72 hours
of health screenings were placed under a mandatory 14-day quarantine
on Friday. It marked the CDC's first quarantine order in 50 years.
The State Department said Friday it was working with Chinese
agencies to arrange additional flights of Americans out of Wuhan.
Washington also plans to evacuate non-essential government employees
and family members from the U.S. Embassy in Beijing and consulates
in Chengdu, Guangzhou, Shanghai and Shenyang due to the outbreak, a
State Department official said on Thursday.
The two-week quarantine of the 195 Americans at March Air Reserve
Base, near Los Angeles, runs from the time the evacuees left China
on Tuesday.
The original plan was to release the passengers after 72 hours of
evaluation and tests, absent any indication of illness, and permit
them to take public transportation home. Local health authorities
would then continue monitoring the evacuees through the remainder of
the incubation period.
CDC officials said then that such a plan posed little or no risk of
spreading the virus because individuals incubating the infection
before symptoms appear are generally not contagious.
But Dr. Nancy Messonnier, director of the CDC's National Center for
Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, told reporters on Friday that
experts' understanding of the virus was still evolving.
She cited emerging evidence the virus can be spread by someone who
is infected but not yet showing signs of being ill, such as fever,
cough and other respiratory symptoms.
The CDC also pointed to a limitation of its screening test for the
virus - a negative result is merely a "point-in-time" snapshot that
cannot conclusively rule out the risk of a person developing the
disease during the 14-day incubation period.
The blanket quarantine at March air base was instituted after one
passenger sought to leave the base without permission on Wednesday
night, and was immediately slapped with an individual quarantine
order by local health officials.
As of Thursday, none of the group at the base had exhibited signs of
the disease, local health officials said.
(Reporting by Makini Brice in Washington and Steve Gorman in Culver
City, Calif.; Additional reporting by Dan Whitcomb and Deena Beasley
in Culver City, Jeff Mason Brice in Washington, Gabriella Borter in
New York, and Manas Mishra and Ankur Banerjee in Bengaluru; Writing
by Steve Gorman; Editing by Bill Tarrant, Dan Grebler, Jonathan
Oatis and Daniel Wallis)
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