President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence announced Saturday additional travel bans on travelers from Iran, and warned Americans not to travel to certain areas of Italy and South Korea.
The United States currently bans some travel from Iran, but that ban will be expanded to include foreign traveling from Iran or through Iran in the past 14 days.
Pence said that the State Department would also announce a level 4 warning about traveling to specific regions in Italy and South Korea, where the virus is also spreading.
“We are urging Americans to not travel to the areas in Italy and the areas in South Korea that are most affected by the coronavirus,” Pence said.
Trump and Pence spoke to reporters in the White House press briefing room on Saturday, confirming the death of a woman in Washington state from the virus and offered their condolences.
“She was a wonderful woman, a medically high-risk patient, in her late 50s,” Trump said about the woman who died.
Trump said that four other patients in the United States were very ill and 15 patients had either recovered fully or were well on their way.
Health officials said that the risk of coronavirus to the general population remained low.
“Additional cases in the United States are likely. But healthy individuals should be able to fully recover,” he said.
The president said that the coronavirus task force met for two and a half hours to discuss the government response to the virus.
He praised the early tough restrictions on travel, helping reduce the number of coronavirus in the United States.
“They are the most aggressive of any country,” he said.
Trump noted that America continued to be the number one travel destination around the world but noted that there were fewer cases of the virus.
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