Fauci: Stopping Travel ‘Very Early’ from China, Europe ‘Has Gone a Long Way’ in Our Fight Against Coronavirus

During a Thursday appearance on MSNBC, Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, discussed the fight against the spread of COVID-19.

Fauci commended the United States’ “very early” decision to halt the travel to the country from China and Europe, saying it “has gone a long way” in preventing the coronavirus from spreading as it did in Italy, which he noted had an open border.

“The reason I think there is a real problem, one of the things we did right was very early cut off travel from China to the United States. Because outside of China, where it originated, the countries in the world that have it are through travel, either directly from China or indirectly from someone who went someplace and then came to that particular country,” Fauci told Lester Holt. “Our shutting off travel from China and, more recently, travel from Europe, has gone a long way to not seeding very, very intensively the virus in our country. Unfortunately, Italy did not do that. They had an open border, they let people in, and until they really knew they were in trouble, then the cat was out, the horse was out of the barn and that was it.”

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