US: States struggle with last-minute coronavirus order
By Greg Richter From Newsmax
The 11 states with airports where airline passengers were directed in an emergency coronaviras order over the weekend were still scrambling early in the week to comply, The Washington Post reported.
The Trump administration ordered flights redirected to 11 different airports for additional screening if they contained passengers who had visited China’s Hubei province, where the coronavirus began, in the past 14 days.
The cities affected are New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle, Atlanta, Honolulu, Newark, Detroit, Dallas, and Washington, D.C.
But officials in some of the cities told the Post they got little or no advanced warning and were still working Monday to figure out where to house people who needed to be quarantined. Among the options were hotels, military bases, and trailers.
“The way this was rolled out is concerning,” Hawaii Lt. Gov. Josh Green told the Post. “This is not the kind of thing you want to do on the fly because that creates chaos. When you rush, you make mistakes, and this isn’t a case where we can afford mistakes.”
One local official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told the Post, “There was no advance notice. This has not been thought through.”
Green said he only found out in advance because he received an emergency phone call from a friend in Washington five minutes before.
At a rushed teleconference, “The kind of questions people were asking were just basic things, like what is your protocol for routing planes into our airports? What is CDC’s standard for quarantine? Where are we supposed to put these people?” Green said.
Nancy Messonnier, who is heading up the CDC’s response, said Monday that federal officials are working with state officials to “determine where travelers will be quarantined.”
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