Thousands of Chinese citizens have reportedly come to the US since President Trump restricted travel to foreign citizens in January, arriving from China after the coronavirus outbreak.
According to a recent report by The Associated Press, citing data it obtained on travel from the US Department of Commerce, as many as 8,000 Chinese citizens and foreign residents of Hong Kong and Macao have entered the US in the past three months.
More than 600 flights brought travelers from these areas after Trump announced his travel ban in late January and was enacted on February 2.
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Trump’s initial travel ban included any non-American traveler coming from China and excluded anyone coming from Hong Kong or Macao in late January.
Travelers in Hong Kong and Macao also didn’t face the same screening or evaluation process as Americans or foreigners who entered the US after being in Wuhan, where the coronavirus outbreak began.
FlightAware flight records provided to The Associated Press showed that 5,600 Chinese and foreign nationals from Hong Kong and Macao arrived in the United States in February. More than 2,000 passengers from the same administrative areas arrived in March and another 150 in April, according to The AP report.
There is insufficient evidence to show that the people on these flights transmitted the coronavirus, but the National Security Council, the Department of State, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and the Department of Health and Human Services ( HHS) made no public comment. on why these territories were exempt from the travel ban to China.
An administration official told the AP that the travel ban was put in place after more than 12,000 people arrived in the US through the two territories in January, according to Commerce records.
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The Trump administration said it would also require any American who has traveled through China and returned to the U.S. to undergo a 14-day quarantine period.
But according to data collected by The Associated Press, the system that was meant to track and monitor quarantined people lost track of at least 1,600 Americans.
Trump has touted his border closures, first from China, then from European nations and Brazil, as the United States’ first line of defense against the coronavirus.
In a tweet last week. The president said: “We did a great job on Coronavirus, including the very early ban on China.”
“We save millions of lives in the United States! However, Fake News refuses to acknowledge this positively, “he added.
Trump’s travel ban on China went into effect on February 2, at which time 15 people had already been confirmed with coronavirus in Hong Kong and seven people in Macao.
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The Macao cases were later directly linked to Wuhan, the source of the outbreak.
The United States has reported more than 2.7 million coronavirus cases and nearly 130,000 deaths during the pandemic.
Since then, Hong Kong has banned all travelers from the U.S.
Associated Press contributed to this report.
