The United States will be suspending all travel from Europe for the next 30 days beginning on Friday, President Donald Trump announced today, in an effort to stop cases of the coronavirus from entering the country. However, the travel restriction will not apply to Britain.
Speaking from the Oval Office in a prime-time address, Trump said he was taking a “strong but necessary” action to keep new cases of the virus from entering the United States of A.
“We are marshalling the full power of the federal government and the private sector to protect the American people,” Trump said per the American ABC News. “This is the most aggressive and comprehensive effort to confront a foreign virus in modern history.”
The travel restriction begins Friday at midnight in the US, with exemptions included for Americans who have undergone the appropriate screenings.
The announcement comes after the World Health Organisation (WHO) declared coronavirus, officially known as COVID-19, a pandemic.
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus made the announcement in the early hours of this morning.
.@WHO is deeply concerned by the alarming levels of the #coronavirus spread, severity & inaction, & expects to see the number of cases, deaths & affected countries climb even higher. Therefore, we made the assessment that #COVID19 can be characterized as a pandemic. https://t.co/97XSmyigME pic.twitter.com/gSqFm947D8
— Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus (@DrTedros) March 11, 2020
As of March 11, there are 112 confirmed cases of coronavirus – including three deaths – in Australia.
