Trump ‘opens door’ to quarantine New York and New Jersey

El presidente Donald Trump said Saturday that it is considering a forced quarantine for parts of New York, New Jersey and Connecticut to stop the outbreak of the new coronavirus in the United States.

Trump told reporters that he had spoken with the governor of New York, Andrew Cuomo, and the governor of Florida, Ron Desantis, in the morning before leaving the White House to send a Navy hospital ship bound for New York City from Norfolk, Virginia.

The president added that “some people” would like him to impose a quarantine on the region, which represents more than half of all infections in the US.

“It will be for a short period of time if we do,” he clarified.

In Albany, Cuomo said the quarantine issue did not come up during his conversation with the president.

The US has registered more than 1,700 deaths and 105,000 cases of COVID-19, according to data from Johns Hopkins University. The country has the largest outbreak of the SARS-CoV-2 virus in the world.

The quarantine would be for “two weeks in New York, probably New Jersey, certain parts of Connecticut”, explicó Trump.

“Travel would be restricted, because they are having problems in Florida because many New Yorkers travel there and we do not want that,” he added.

Trump noted that some states (of which he did not name) were calling for a quarantine for the New York and New Jersey area.

“They go to Florida and a lot of people don’t want that,” he said.

Rhode Island State Police, assisted by the National Guard, began this Saturday to find people who had traveled from New York to ask them to self-quarantine themselves. In Florida, Desantis asked people who had been in the New York City area in the past three weeks to self-isolate.

When asked about his ambition to urge many Americans to return to work on the U.S. Easter Sunday holiday on April 12, Trump said: “we’ll see what happens”.

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