A new fact check from the Associated Press has debunked Trump’s repeated false claims about the effectiveness of his China travel ban in preventing the spread of COVID-19 in the United States.

 

In fact, one top health official at the CDC has confirmed that the China travel ban was “too little, too late.” Trump’s China travel ban was extremely porous and even after travel bans were enacted, the Trump administration failed to screen the temperature of 90% of travelers entering from restricted countries.

 

When Senator Susan Collins defended Trump’s response to the coronavirus crisis, she specifically pointed to the China travel ban to back up her claim that he “did a lot that was right in the beginning.” Now that it’s clear that her defense of Trump was based on yet another example of this administration’s ineffective response to this pandemic, will Collins finally step up to hold Trump accountable or will she continue making bogus excuses for his failures?

 

The Associated Press: AP FACT CHECK: Trump’s perfect China ‘ban,’ death toll myths

 

By Hope Yen and Calvin Woodward

May 11, 2020

 

Key Points:

 

  • Truth often takes a beating when President Donald Trump talks about his administration’s response to the coronavirus and the subsequent death toll in the U.S. This past week was no exception.

 

  • Over the weekend, the president claimed strong marks for himself for the handling of the pandemic after imposing a “very early ban of people from China.” It actually wasn’t a total ban and had plenty of gaps in containment. One of the government’s top health officials has described the China restrictions as too little, too late.

 

  • TRUMP: “We are getting great marks for the handling of the CoronaVirus pandemic, especially the very early BAN of people from China, the infectious source, entering the USA.” — tweet Sunday.

 

  • THE FACTS: This is one of Trump’s favorite exaggerations, asserting that travel restrictions he imposed on China in late January had averted much of the virus’ entry into the U.S.

 

  • In fact, Trump didn’t “ban” all the people infected with coronavirus from entering the U.S. from China. There were many gaps in containment and initial delays in testing, leading to the U.S. rising to No. 1 globally in the number of people infected by COVID-19.

 

  • His order temporarily barred entry by foreign nationals who had traveled in China within the previous 14 days, with exceptions for the immediate family of U.S. citizens and permanent residents as well as American citizens.

 

  • In addition, Dr. Anne Schuchat, the No. 2 official at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told The Associated Press earlier this month the federal government was slow to understand how much coronavirus was spreading from Europe, which helped drive the acceleration of outbreaks across the U.S. in late February. Trump didn’t announce travel restrictions for many European countries until mid-March.

 

  • “The extensive travel from Europe, once Europe was having outbreaks, really accelerated our importations and the rapid spread,” she told the AP. ”I think the timing of our travel alerts should have been earlier.”

 

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