Fact Check: Did Donald Trump Suspend All Travel From China
Getty/Justin SullivanVice President Mike Pence and Senator Kamala Harris clashed on the administrationâs coronavirus response on October 7.
Mike Pence several times at the October 7 vice presidential debate with Senator Kamala Harris claimed that President Donald Trump had banned all travel from China early in the coronavirus pandemic.
From the very first day, President Donald Trump has put the health of Americans first, Pence said in the debate. Before we had five cases all people who returned from China he did what no one had ever did: He suspended all travel from China.
The China travel ban is a regular talking point for Trump when defending his administrations response to the pandemic.
So, did Trump actually ban all travel from China? Heres what you need to know:
Trump Bans Travel From China Orders 1st Quarantine In 50 Years
President Donald Trump has taken tough steps to protect Americans from the spread of the coronavirus rampaging through China.
In an order issued Friday, federal officials announced that as of 5 p.m. Sunday, Foreign nationals other than immediate family of U.S. citizens and permanent residents who have traveled in China in the last 14 days will be denied entry into United States.
American citizens returning the U.S. from areas in China where they may have been exposed to the virus will be quarantined, while others coming from the rest of China will be screened for the virus.
Earlier Friday, officials said Americans who evacuated from Wuhan earlier in the week would be quarantined for up to 14 days at March Air Reserve Base in California the first mandatory quarantine order in the U.S. in 50 years, according to NPR.
As of Saturday, about 250 had died from the virus and about 12,000 infections had been confirmed, according to The New York Times. No deaths have been reported outside of China.
Eight cases of the virus have been confirmed in the United States.
The eighth case was reported Saturday in Massachusetts. According to the Boston Herald, the man infected had been in Wuhan, China, the epicenter of the virus. The other cases have been reported in California, Arizona, Washington state and Illinois.
Italy Banned Flights From China Before America
U.S. President Donald Trump addresses the nation from the Oval Office about the widening Coronavirus crisis on March 11, 2020
Speaking to the nation last night, U.S. President Donald Trump said a ban on Europeans entering the United States is necessary because Europe hadnt banned flights from China early as the U.S. had done.
The European Union failed to take the same precautions and restrict travel from China and other hot spots as a result a large number of new clusters were seeded by travellers from Europe, he said.
But virtually every part of this statement is untrue.
Italy imposed a ban on flights from China on 31 January, immediately after a Chinese couple in Rome tested positive for the virus. The U.S. began to restrict flights from China four days later. But while Italy enacted a full ban, the U.S. policy was only a restriction, with wide exemptions.
On February 4 the U.S. State Department issued a level 4 travel advisory mandating that foreign citizens who had been to China be turned away, and Americans who had been to China must undergo screening and possibly be put in quarantine for 14 days. But the restrictions contained wide exemptions, largely because of fears over the economic impacts of a full ban. Flight routes between the U.S. and China have been steadily cancelled over the past month, but in a piecemeal fashion and at the discretion of airlines.
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White House Tells Airlines It May Suspend All China
- White House officials have told U.S. airlines the Trump administration is considering suspending China flights amid an escalating death toll from the new coronavirus, but it has not decided to take that step.
- The restrictions could affect flights into and out of China, as well as airports across the United States, the officials said.
- HHS Secretary Alex Azar said “it’s important to not take anything off the table,” when asked whether the U.S. would impose more travel restrictions.
White House officials have told U.S. airlines the Trump administration is considering suspending flights from China to the U.S. amid an escalating outbreak of a new coronavirus that has infected thousands of people across the world, people familiar with the matter said.
The Trump administration is looking at a variety of measures to contain the fast-spreading virus, U.S. health officials told reporters on a conference call Tuesday.
White House officials called executives at major U.S. carriers on Tuesday, telling them that a temporary ban on China flights is on the table, according to people familiar with those conversations.
As of Tuesday evening, the Trump administration had not taken that step and there was no guarantee that it would do so.
Two of the people said the White House told them it doesn’t immediately plan to ban China air travel, but administration officials are constantly evaluating the situation.
Such Restrictions Did Little To Contain Covid
During the first presidential debate, President Trump hailed his efforts to restrict travelers from China as evidence of his administrations effective response to the covid-19 pandemic, saying the early decision saved thousands of lives. He went on to claim that his opponent, Democratic nominee Joe Biden, would have opted to close the country late, resulting in 2 million deaths a tenfold increase in lost American lives.
The president is incorrect. The United States did not implement its travel restriction early. Nor did it close the country to arrivals from China. In addition, there is little evidence that travel restrictions alone saved millions of lives in this country or any other. On the contrary: Unless the United States and other nations act, the widespread use of travel bans in this pandemic have made Americans and citizens of other countries more vulnerable to future pandemic threats.
Restricting flights from China did nothing to prevent the virus from arriving from other parts of the world. Genetic analyses have shown that the large epidemic that unfolded in New York was linked to travelers from Europe. In the early days of the U.S. epidemic, testing was restricted to people with a travel history to China, which limited the ability to detect locally the cases and infections among travelers from other countries.
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Does That Mean Future Bans Will Work
Although our results provide strong evidence that international travel from Italy increased the spread of COVID-19 in the U.S. during the first wave of the pandemic, this occurred at a time when people were largely unaware of the virus and the threat that it posed.
Today, with both travelers and policymakers aware of the threat, it is uncertain what effect international travel would have on the spread of COVID-19 in the U.S. At the same time, new, more transmittable strains of the virus increase the threat from international travel. If the evidence does warrant additional travel restrictions, our research says to act quickly and think broadly.
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Has The Announcement Been Welcomed
In its response the EU said the coronavirus was “a global crisis, not limited to any continent and it requires cooperation rather than unilateral action”.
“The EU disapproves of the fact that the US decision to impose a travel ban was taken unilaterally and without consultation,” European Commission President Ursula Von der Leyen and European Council President Charles Michel said in a statement.
Senior Democrats said it was “alarming” that President Trump had not addressed a shortage of coronavirus testing kits in the US.
“The best way to help keep the American people safe and ensure their economic security is for the president to focus on fighting the spread of the coronavirus itself,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said in a statement.
On the travel ban, Lawrence Gostin, a public health expert at Georgetown University, tweeted: “Most of Europe is as safe as US. This will have no impact on US … germs don’t respect borders.”
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A Timeline Of The Trump Administrations Coronavirus Actions
Travel restrictions, lack of tests, contradicting claims: These are some of the major actions by the US president.
The administration of United States President Donald Trump has faced its greatest challenge in 2020: The coronavirus pandemic and the disease it causes, COVID-19.
Since emerging in China at the end of 2019, the virus has spread all over the world. The US now leads the globe in the pandemics spread, with almost 830,000 cases and 46,000 deaths as of April 21.
The administrations response has been widespread, ranging from downplaying the crisis to enormous bailouts. It has also been the subject of much criticism, with Trump taking to his daily briefings to defend his response, often making contradictory claims.
Here is a timeline of key actions taken by the Trump administration related to its response to the virus within the US:
Trump Administration Restricts Entry Into Us From China
The travel disruption sent shocks through the stock market and rattled industries that depend on the flow of goods and people between the worlds two largest economies.
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Moving to counter the spreading coronavirus outbreak, the Trump administration said Friday that it would bar entry by most foreign nationals who had recently visited China and put some American travelers under a quarantine as it declared a rare public health emergency.
The temporary restrictions followed announcements by American Airlines, Delta Air Lines and United Airlines that they would suspend air service between the United States and China for several months.
The travel disruption sent shocks through the stock market and rattled industries that depend on the flow of goods and people between the worlds two largest economies. Planning was upended for companies across a vast global supply chain, from Apple to John Deere, the tractor company.
The S& P 500 suffered its worst loss since October, falling 1.8 percent, as the spread of the virus and the increasingly urgent efforts by companies and governments to contain it fanned fears of an economic slowdown.
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Delayed Travel Restrictions From China Failed To Contain The Coronavirus
By the time President Trump started implementing U.S. travel restrictions from China on February 2, nearly 40 countries had already enforced travel restrictions. The Marshall Islands was the first country to implement restrictions on all travelers coming from or traveling through China, on January 24. Anyone wishing to enter was required to spend at least fourteen days in a country not affected by the coronavirus prior to arriving in the Marshall Islands. Thirty-eight countries banned travel, barred noncitizens or canceled all flights from China before or on the same date as the United States, and 12 additional countries enforced a travel policy but with less restrictive policies, such as suspending visas.*
Because of Trumps late response, more than 430,000 people came to the United States from China after Chinese officials notified the U.S. administration of the seriousness of the Wuhan outbreaknearly 40,000 of whom arrived after Trumps restrictions went into effect.
Pelosi Statement On President Trumps Expanded Travel Ban
Washington, D.C. Speaker Nancy Pelosi released this statement after the Trump Administration announced it is adding Myanmar, Eritrea, Kyrgyzstan, Nigeria, Tanzania and Sudan to the travel ban that the President instituted three years ago:
The Trump Administrations expansion of its outrageous, un-American travel ban threatens our security, our values and the rule of law. The sweeping rule, barring more than 350 million individuals from predominantly African nations from traveling to the United States, is discrimination disguised as policy.
Americas strength has always been as a beacon of hope and opportunity for people around the world, whose dreams and aspirations have enriched our nation and made America more American. With this latest callous decision, the President has doubled down on his cruelty and further undermined our global leadership, our Constitution and our proud heritage as a nation of immigrants.
In the Congress and in the Courts, House Democrats will continue to oppose the Administrations dangerous anti-immigrant agenda. In the coming weeks, the House Judiciary Committee will mark-up and bring to the Floor the NO BAN Act to prohibit religious discrimination in our immigration system and limit the Presidents ability to impose such biased and bigoted restrictions. We will never allow hatred or bigotry to define our nation or destroy our values.
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Trouble With Predicting Future Of Transportation Is That Today Gets In The Way
EU politicians are furious about Trumps characterisation, not only because he has mischaracterised the European response, but also because there is no evidence that it was Europeans who brought Coronavirus to the United States. In fact, experts say it most likely came directly from China.
The only country in Europe that has banned direct flights from China when the Coronavirus started was Italy, says Pascal Canfin, the chair of the European Parliaments public health committee and a close ally of French President Emmanuel Macron. Italy is today the country which is most hit by Coronavirus. So the least I can say is that stopping flights was not an effective response for Italy to stop importing the virus.
It didnt work in the past in Europe regarding flights from China, so I dont see why it should work from Europe to the U.S., he adds. It proved to be ineffective in the Italian case.
The EU executive and the 27 leaders of EU member countries issued a joint statement this morning saying they were blindsided by Trumps oval office announcement, and had not had any communication from U.S. officials.
The EU disapproves of the fact that the U.S. decision to impose a travel ban was taken unilaterally and without consultation, the statement reads. The Coronavirus is a global crisis, not limited to any continent and it requires cooperation rather than unilateral action.
As Trump Administration Debated Travel Restrictions Thousands Streamed In From China
12 Min Read
– In defending his strategy against the deadly coronavirus, President Donald Trump repeatedly has said he slowed its spread into the United States by acting decisively to bar travelers from China on Jan. 31.
I was criticized by the Democrats when I closed the Country down to China many weeks ahead of what almost everyone recommended. Saved many lives, he tweeted, for instance, on March 2.
But Reuters has found that the administration took a month from the time it learned of the outbreak in late December to impose the initial travel restrictions amid furious infighting.
During that time, the National Security Council staff, the state department and other federal agencies argued about everything from how best to screen for sick travelers to the economic impact of any restrictions, according to two government officials familiar with the deliberations.
The NSC staff ultimately proposed aggressive travel restrictions to high-level administration officials – but it took at least a week more for the president to adopt them, one of the government officials said.
Each day that the administration debated the travel measures, roughly 14,000 travelers arrived in the United States from China, according to figures cited by the Trump administration. Among them was a traveler who came from Wuhan to Seattle in mid-January, who turned out to be the first confirmed case in the United States.
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Coronavirus: Cdc Puts Americans Who Left Wuhan Into Unprecedented 14
In addition, the U.S. is temporarily suspending entry of most travelers arriving from China, or who have recently been in China, if they are not U.S. citizens.
Foreign nationals other than immediate family of U.S. citizens and permanent residents who have traveled in China in the last 14 days will be denied entry into United States, Azar said.
Further, U.S. citizens who have been in other areas of mainland China in the past two weeks will be subject to screening at the airport of entry and to heightened monitoring for 14 days.
In their Friday remarks, federal health officials pointed to the fast global spread of the virus as justification for the move. The World Health Organization on Thursday.
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Travel Restrictions From Europe Were Too Little Too Late
Trump waited 40 daysuntil March 11after he announced the China travel ban to implement travel restrictions from Europe. At that point, New York already had 216 cases.
Research now shows that travelers from Europenot Chinawere the primary cause of the COVID-19 spread in the New York region. New York state alone currently has more cases than every other country outside the United States. Researchers found that the coronavirus was already spreading throughout the region by mid-February and that he majority is clearly European.
According to a recently unearthed email thread with public health experts and administration officials, the European travel ban was far too late to have any impact. A former Trump homeland security adviser summed it up in an email: Theres little value to European travel restrictions. Poor use of time & energy. Earlier, yes. We have nearly as much disease here in the US as the countries in Europe. We MUST focus on layered community mitigation measures-Now!
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