Acting DHS Secretary Wolf: No ‘immediate’ plans for domestic travel ban amid coronavirus
Acting DHS secretary Wolf: No immediate plans to place ban on domestic travel
Acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf joins ‘Sunday Morning Futures.’
Speaking on «Sunday Morning Futures» in an exclusive interview, acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf discussed whether the president would implement a domestic travel ban and national shutdown in the near future.
When host Maria Bartiromo asked Wolf if President Trump is considering a full shutdown of the country for a period of time he said, “Not at this time.”
He then referenced the set of national guidelines that are in effect for a period of at least 15 days to prevent the further spread of the coronavirus. “The president and the vice president and the task force have been very aggressive and very forward-leaning” in providing guidance, Wolf said.
When Bartiromo asked Wolf if the president was considering shutting down all domestic travel for 30 days, he responded, “We continue to look at it” adding that there was no “immediate plan” to enact such restrictions.
“We continue to be concerned about those high transmission areas like New York, like parts of California and Washington, so we’re going to continue to look at that and if we see that we need to put some targeted travel restrictions in place, we will do that,” he explained. “But, I will say there’s no immediate plan as of right now for any widespread travel restrictions.”
Officials in California, New York, Illinois, New Jersey, Ohio and Connecticut have ordered people in their states to stay home to help reduce the spread of the virus.
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As of Sunday afternoon, there have been 31,057 confirmed coronavirus cases reported in the United States with 400 deaths, according to data compiled by Fox News. New York had the most cases with 15,777 reported, followed by New Jersey with 1,914, Washington with 1,793 and California with 1,554, according to the data.
“We’re focusing on those states and those localities that have widespread community transmission, so New York, California, Washington, there’s other parts of the country that we’re seeing cases spike, and so those governors are obviously looking at those numbers closely, they’re in touch with the CDC [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention], they’re in touch with HHS [Department of Health and Human Services] and the task force,” Wolf told Bartiromo.
“There’s other parts of the country, perhaps in the Midwest and South, that are not seeing those same numbers,” he continued. “They don’t need to take those aggressive measures at this time, but we continue to evaluate this really on a day by day, week by week basis.”
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“We want to take aggressive steps in those communities that we’re seeing large numbers and outbreaks so that we don’t have to take those measures elsewhere if we don’t need to. That’s really the concept behind it,” he added.
Fox Business’ Maria Bartiromo contributed to this report.
