People who left New York City urged to ‘self-isolate’ for 14 days over coronavirus

With New York City quickly becoming a new Covid-19 hotspot, the White House coronavirus task force is urging all New Yorkers who may have left the city for elsewhere to self-quarantine as they might have been exposed.

“To everyone who has left New York City over the last few days, because of the number of cases, you may have been exposed before you left,” Dr. Deborah Birx said on Tuesday at the daily coronavirus briefing, adding that anyone who had been in New York should be “self-quarantining for the next 14 days to ensure the virus doesn't spread to others.”

New York state accounted for 60 percent of all the new Covid-19 cases in the US by Tuesday and almost half the total cases, with 25,665 documented instances. Big Apple residents were almost ten times more likely to be infected than any other Americans, noted Dr. Anthony Fauci of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

“We don’t want it to become another seeding point,” Fauci said, adding that anyone in the New York metropolitan area who traveled elsewhere should "monitor temperature, be sensitive to symptoms" and self-isolate for two weeks, in order to prevent further spread of the virus.

The White House promised as much federal help as possible to the beleaguered governor Andrew Cuomo, with the Army Corps of Engineers going in to set up three makeshift hospitals, about 12,000 ventilators being sent to the state to help with the surge of cases, and a special hospital ship heading there as soon as possible.

New York City “is definitely a hotspot, there’s no question about it,” President Donald Trump said. He remained optimistic that much of the US would cautiously reopen for business in the coming weeks – ideally by Easter, which falls on April 12 in the West – but allowed that places with contagion still out of control, such as Big Apple, may need to remain shuttered for longer.

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