WASHINGTON: Death toll from novel coronavirus in United States rose to 15 on Saturday as half a dozen states reported their first cases of the fast-spreading respiratory disease.
The respiratory illness emerged in China and has spread to more than 90 nations, killing more than 3,400 people and infecting more than 100,000 worldwide.
According to US officials, twenty-one people aboard a cruise ship that was barred from docking in San Francisco have tested positive for coronavirus.
Vice President Mike Pence, who is running the White House’s response to the outbreak, said at a news conference that 19 crew members and two passengers out of 46 people tested so far on the Grand Princess ship had the virus.
He said the vessel with about 3,500 passengers and crew would be taken to a non-commercial port where everyone on board would be tested.
US President Donald Trump said he would rather have passengers remain on board the vessel, but that he would let others decide if they can disembark.
“I’d rather have them stay on, personally, but I fully understand if they want to take them off,” Trump told reporters after touring the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta.
Allowing passengers onto US soil who might be infected would push up the number of coronavirus cases in the country, he said. “I don’t need to have the numbers double because of one ship that wasn’t our fault,” Trump said.
Keeping passengers quarantined aboard a coronavirus-hit ship proved to be a disastrous strategy in Japan, leading to one of the world’s biggest outbreaks.
On Friday, seven states — Pennsylvania, Indiana, Minnesota, Kentucky, Oklahoma, Nebraska and South Carolina — reported their first cases, meaning more than half of the 50 US states now have the virus.
In Seattle, the epicenter of the nation’s outbreak, there were school closures and orders to work from home. In areas less affected by the outbreak, music festivals, conferences and sports events were canceled or curtailed as a precaution.
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