New York Governor Andrew Cuomo asked President Donald Trump’s administration on Sunday to take necessary precautions against the new mutation of the covid-19 virus that has surfaced in the UK and is spreading rapidly.
He stressed at a press conference to talk about the pandemic that several countries have banned people from traveling from the UK and that 120 countries require them to pass a negative test before flying into that country to get to theirs.
But, said Cuomo, the United States has not taken any action in response to the mutation of the virus, which the Democratic governor finds “reprehensible”.
Cuomo wondered that there are still six daily flights arriving from that country to New York’s John F. Kennedy Airport (JFK) “and we have done nothing at all.”
“This is reprehensible to me because it is what happened during the spring” when the pandemic exploded in the US, he said, stating that at the moment “the UK variant arrives at JFK airport by air”.
“One hundred and twenty countries need a test. We don’t. Other European countries have imposed a ban. We don’t have it and today the variant is to take the plane and land on the JFK. How often in life do you have to do the same before? make a mistake? learn, ”he said.
He recalled that the Ports Authority, which manages the bridges, highways, and ports of New York and New Jersey, does not have the authority to ban passengers or monitor their health, which is a job for the federal government.
On December 14, UK Health Secretary Matt Hancock warned of a ‘new variant’ spreading very quickly of SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes Covid-19, which had been identified in the Kingdom. United.
Hancock said British scientists had “discovered a new variant of coronavirus possibly related to its faster spread in southern England.”
The governor asked the federal government to consider multiple restrictions in the aftermath of the new variant of Covid-19, including the imposition of mandatory tests on people traveling to this country from the UK, as well as a new travel ban from Europe.
According to Cuomo, the actions he recommends are based on lessons learned in March, when the federal government was slow to impose a European travel ban that allowed the virus to spread uncontrollably through New York State and the country. .
The governor also indicated in his conference that there are 6,185 covid patients in hospitals in New York, 23 fewer than on Saturday, 822 new admissions and 123 deaths.
According to the independent census of Johns Hopkins University, the United States has recorded 17.7 million cases and more than 316,000 deaths from Covid-19, more than any other country in the world in absolute terms.