The "epicenter" of the coronavirus pandemic has moved from China and South Korea to Europe, leading to President Donald Trump's decision to cut off travel to the United States, Vice President Mike Pence said Thursday.
"You go back to when the coronavirus first emerged in January in this country, the president, again, just like he did last night, he took unprecedented action in January to suspend all travel from China," Pence told Fox News' "Fox & Friends." "We quarantined any Americans that were returning from China to put the health of America first. We issued travel advisories for Italy and for South Korea."
Pence said all Americans returning from Europe will be screened as they return to the United States through 13 designated airports, and they will be asked to self-quarantine for 14 days after they come home.
"What we learned from our health experts in the last 36 hours was that yesterday, as of the 35 cases where we had coronavirus cases, about 30 of those states, 35 states, 30 of those states actually could trace the contact to someone in Europe," Pence added. "That's the reason the president took the decisive action he took."
He also said he would leave the decision up to families about whether they should encourage college students studying overseas to return home.
"I would suggest to you that now that we see that 70% of the new coronavirus cases in this country or in the world are now being manifest in Europe, I would leave that decision to every family, but there is no barrier to their kids or any American coming home," Pence said. "They will go through a process. We will ask them to self-quarantine. But, they can all come home."
He pointed out, about two weeks ago, Italy had roughly 500 cases, but as of Wednesday, it had 12,000. Germany and France each also have about 1,000 cases.
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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