Coronavirus: Trump travel bans were too late to prevent Covid-19 transmission, as CDC confirms outbr

By the time Donald Trump‘s administration imposed travel restrictions from Europe into the US at the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, the virus had been circulating widely in New York City, according to a new report from the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). A month after the president imposed a travel ban from China on 2 February, a virus strain that more closely resembled one from Europe was infecting New Yorkers. By mid-March, community transmission was widespread, the CDC reports. “The virus came to New York, and Americans died, because of government failure,” New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said in a call with reporters on Thursday. ”They missed the science.” The study collected samples from the New York Department of Health and Mental Hygiene from 1 March through 20 March. On 8 March, the department announced it had detected community transmission of the virus. Among 544 specimens that the CDC studied from patients with flu-like illnesses that tested negative for influenza, 36 tested positive for Covid-19, and “genetically sequenced positive specimens most closely resembled sequences circulating in Europe,” according to the report.