President Donald Trump announced that he would be suspending all travel from Europe to the United States for the next 30 days amid the growing coronavirus outbreak.
“The European Union failed to take the same precautions (early on),” Trump said, speaking from the Oval Office Wednesday night. “As a result, a lot of new clusters in the United States were seeded from travelers from Europe.”
The travel ban goes into effect Friday at midnight and will also include a ban on some cargo. The U.K. and Americans who have been screened will be exempt from the restrictions.
It’s also not immediately known what would prohibit passengers leaving Europe from connecting in the UK and continuing on to the United States, or connecting in Canada or Mexico. . or really.. anywhere else.
Foreign Nationals from: Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Italy, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, and Switzerland cannot travel here for 30 days if they were in any of those countries 14 days before travel to the US. This does not apply to legal permanent residents, (generally) immediate family members of U.S. citizens, and other individuals who are identified in the proclamation. Therefore, U.S. citizens, legal residents and their families can still travel to the US, even if they’ve been in those countries.
The impact of banning tourism from Europe of this magnitude hasn’t been realized.
Watch More News On Al Jazeera Live