Sweeping travel bans heighten alarm as virus takes heavy toll
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SWEEPING travel bans accelerated around the globe yesterday, walling regions apart, keeping people inside their homes and slowing the engines of commerce to slow the unfolding coronavirus pandemic.
Travelers scrambled to rebook flights and markets reeled yesterday after United States President Donald Trump imposed restrictions on travel from Europe, hitting battered airlines and heightening global alarm over the coronavirus.
Trump had downplayed risks to the US during the crisis, but with epidemics ballooning from Iran to Italy and Spain, he limited travel from continental Europe for 30 days. “This is the most aggressive and comprehensive effort to confront a foreign virus in modern history,” he said in a televised address from the Oval Office on Wednesday.
“It caused a mass panic,” said 20-year-old Anna Grace, a US student at Suffolk University on her first trip to Europe, who rushed to Madrid’s Barajas airport at 5am to get home.
Trump’s surprise travel order, which starts at midnight today, does not apply to Britain or to Americans undergoing “appropriate screenings,” he said.
The 27-nation European Union bloc was not impressed.
“The European Union disapproves of the fact that the US decision ... was taken unilaterally and without consultation,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and Council President Charles Michel said in a statement.
But US Vice President Mike Pence defended the new restrictions, saying the epicenter of the pandemic had shifted from Asia to Europe. “We know there will be more infections in the days ahead. We’re trying to hold that number down as much as possible,” Pence told NBC’s Today program.
More than 126,000 people in more than 110 countries have been infected. The vast majority are in four countries: China and South Korea — where new cases are declining —and Iran and Italy, where they are not. More than 4,600 people have died worldwide.
In Italy, the center of Europe’s epidemic, new restrictions closed restaurants, cafes and retail shops yesterday after the prime minister imposed a nationwide lockdown on personal movement earlier. Grocery stores, pharmacies and outdoor markets were allowed to operate, as were newspaper stands.
Spain’s government underwent coronavirus testing yesterday after a minister tested positive and was quarantined with her partner, and cases soared close to 3,000. The surge in infections brought the total to 2,968 cases in Spain up from 2,140 on Wednesday evening, with deaths leaping to 84 from 48 within the same time frame.
Ireland, Norway and Lithuania joined the growing list of countries shutting down their school systems.
Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte announced strict immigration curbs and a halt on domestic land, sea and air travel to and from Manila, in what he called a “lockdown” of the capital to arrest the spread of coronavirus.
Duterte approved a resolution allowing a raft of measures including bans on mass gatherings, a month of school closures and community quarantining.
Duterte, who underwent a test himself yesterday due to possible exposure, said the measures would include banning foreigners traveling from countries with domestic transmissions from entering the Philippines.
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