WASHINGTON — The United States got more “index cases” of COVID-19 from Europe, specifically Italy, which spread the coronavirus to 13 states and Puerto Rico — than it did from China, according to The Intercept.
But President Donald Trump’s strategy was to keep the Chinese out of America — to the exclusion of Europe. He issued a travel restriction for China on January 31.
After all, the virus was reported to have originated in Wuhan, China.
But flights from China to the United States continue to this day. The New York Times reported that 430,000 Chinese people traveled to the U.S. by April 4 — since the novel virus was first reported by China in December 2019.
On Saturday, Italy announced that 793 people had died that day from COVID-19, the coronavirus that originated in China that has rapidly spread across the world. That was up from 627 deaths that had occurred on Friday and 427 on Thursday. The death toll is now well over 5,000 in that country alone.
Also on Saturday, two Alitalia flights took off from Rome’s Leonardo da Vinci International Airport in Italy and landed at New York’s JFK Airport.
February 24, meanwhile, was China’s deadliest day from COVID-19; if Beijing’s possibly suspect statistics are to be believed, 149 people died from the coronavirus on that day. That afternoon, an Air China 777 arrived at JFK after a 13-hour flight from Beijing. The following day, Los Angeles International Airport welcomed flights from both Beijing and Shanghai.
While the China restrictions began as Trump’s attempt to close the front door to infections from the nation where the pandemic started, the back door — travel from Europe, where the virus took hold particularly fiercely in Italy — remained wide open until the middle of March and can be connected to a huge surge of cases in the U.S., especially in the New York area.
The Intercept reviewed hundreds of media reports detailing the first recorded coronavirus cases — known as the “index cases” — in U.S. states and territories. European travel preceded the index cases in at least 13 states and territories, compared to only five from China. There were more imported index cases from cruise ships (six) than from China, while Italy accounted for at least 10 of the first Covid-19 cases.
For instance, Missouri’s first case was a young woman who studied abroad in Italy, while a high school trip to Milan was behind Rhode Island’s index case. Travelers from Italy brought it to Florida, Georgia, Oklahoma, Colorado, New Hampshire, and South Carolina. Italian tourists brought Covid-19 to Puerto Rico, and a Navy reservist stationed in Italy brought it to Maine.
A review of the known index cases also shows that the coronavirus often spread from the northeastern United States, indicating a chain of transmission from China to Europe to the East Coast of the U.S., and from there to other U.S. states. Many state governments have declined to publicly share data on the provenance of their early cases, but some, like New Mexico, Kansas, North Dakota, and Idaho, confirmed that their first cases had links to New York or the northeastern U.S.
Meanwhile, Trump on Friday ordered top U.S. administration officials to help Italy in fighting the novel coronavirus by providing medical supplies, humanitarian relief and other assistance.
In a memo to several Cabinet ministers, Trump ordered a variety of measures to help Italy, including making U.S. military personnel in the country available for telemedicine services, helping set up field hospitals, and transporting supplies.
“The Italian Republic (Italy), one of our closest and oldest Allies, is being ravaged by the COVID-19 pandemic, which has already claimed more than 18,000 lives, brought much of the Italian healthcare system to the brink of collapse, and threatens to push Italy’s economy into a deep recession,” Trump said in the memo.
Italy has recorded the biggest number of deaths from COVID-19, the respiratory disease caused by the novel coronavirus, followed by the United States.
Trump ordered his commerce secretary to encourage U.S. suppliers to sell products requested by Italian authorities and healthcare providers, except those required for the United States’ own response to the pandemic.
The memo said the secretary of state, the head of the U.S. Agency for International Aid and the president of the U.S. Export-Import Bank “may use available authorities to support the recovery of the Italian economy.”