President Trump’s top health chief said Tuesday that “all options are on the table,” including travel restrictions, to keep people in the United States safe from the coronavirus outbreak that originated in Wuhan, China.
Earlier on Tuesday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned people living in the U.S. to cancel all “nonessential travel” to China. Soon after, Alex Azar, the head of the Department of Health and Human Services, wouldn’t detail for reporters how much more restrictive travel would become. Health agencies, he said, would consider all options as more information about the still-mysterious virus comes in.
“Americans should know that this is potentially a very serious public health threat, but at this point, Americans should not worry for their own safety,” he said.
Azar didn’t specifically say that people in China would be prohibited from traveling to the U.S. Travel bans tend to be discouraged by global public health officials who worry that countries will otherwise keep their outbreaks a secret, making the problem worse.
Five people in the U.S. who traveled to Wuhan have been confirmed infected with the coronavirus, and an additional 110 people are under investigation for possible infection. At least 4,515 people in China have been infected with the virus, and 106 have died. Some cases involve symptoms of a mild cold, while others experience symptoms more similar to those of pneumonia. Officials at the CDC think that people start to show symptoms anywhere between two to 14 days after they’ve been infected.
Because the virus is so new, scientists still don’t know how infectious or deadly it is. They also don’t know whether people who don’t show symptoms can transmit the virus, Azar said.
“We are preparing for the possibility that the situation could worsen,” he said.
Scientists think the virus originated from a dead animal at a meat and seafood market but haven’t identified which species may be responsible. Coronaviruses belong to a large family of viruses and are common in animals. Middle East respiratory syndrome and SARS are both types of coronaviruses that caused international alarm, killing 858 and 774 people, respectively.
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The U.S. has developed a way to test for the virus but doesn’t yet have a treatment. Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said scientists have already started to develop a vaccine. The agency will start its first phase of testing in about three months, which will aim to determine whether the vaccine is safe.
“We will keep you posted as we make progress in each of these,” Fauci said.
In the U.S., officials are tracking infected people, isolating them, treating them, and reaching out to other people they came in contact with. The virus can be hard to track down because the U.S. is also in the middle of its flu season, an illness with similar symptoms to the coronavirus.
Asked about the possibility of the Trump administration appointing a “coronavirus czar,” as the Obama administration did during an Ebola outbreak, Azar indicated that agency officials would suffice in being able to control and coordinate response to the outbreak, saying “preparedness is our day job.”
“We are all working together in a very transparent way,” Azar said.
He also said the agency was still considering whether it would call for a public health emergency, suggesting that it might still be too early given that only five people in the U.S. have been infected.
“I won’t hesitate at all to invoke any authorities I need … but I’ll do it when it’s appropriate under the standards,” he said.
