US funneling flights from China to 11 airports
The acting head of U.S. Homeland Security says the U.S. is taking the steps needed to safeguard Americans with a "multilayered strategy" at air, land and maritime ports of entry to stem the spread of the new virus.
Secretary Chad Wolf said on Fox News Channel's "Sunday Morning Futures" that the U.S. is currently funneling flights from China to 11 airports, including anybody who has been in China within the last 14 days, to make sure they get medical screening and health care. If needed, potentially afflicted individuals may be government-quarantined or self-quarantined.
Wolf said the three major U.S. airline carriers over the past several weeks have all but ceased flights from China, so those incoming flights are mostly Chinese airlines carrying mostly U.S. citizens.
Wolf said the Coast Guard is monitoring cargo ships carrying crew who've been to China to make certain they aren't carrying the virus. If any show symptoms, they don't be allowed in, he said.
"We're taking necessary precautions," he said.
The United Arab Emirates says among the people infected with the new virus in the Arabian Peninsula nation has recovered.
The state-run WAM news agency announced Sunday night that 73-year-old Chinese national Liu Yujia tested negative for the virus.
WAM aired a video showing her, wearing a nose and mouth mask, receiving flowers and ending up in Chinese Consul General Li Xuhang in Abu Dhabi and an Emirati health official.
That leaves six cases of the virus in the UAE, a federation of seven sheikhdoms home to Dubai.
The Emirati government has not offered information on where it really is treating those infected with the virus. In Liu's case, WAM said the girl had been "treated at an isolation ward."
Five Chinese nationals and one Filipino remain infected with the virus in the UAE.
French medical authorities are testing hundreds of children and their own families for the virus after a 9-year-old British boy who would go to school in the French Alps contracted it.
French Health Minister Agnes Buzyn visited the ski resort Sunday where five Britons were found to really have the virus, Contamines-Montjoie, and tried to reassure residents and tourists that they can "live normally."
She said there's a "very weak risk" for the populace most importantly, at least up to now.
An 80-year-old Chinese tourist with the virus remains in intensive care in a Paris hospital, but authorities have "no particular worry" about the other 10 people in France with the virus, Buzyn said.
She said she foretells British authorities almost every day about the evolution of the virus.
