Tony's Diary Package — page 12

ysHour; Ken Cuccinelli, Acting Deputy Secretary, Department of Homeland Security Joel Szabat, Acting Under Secretary for Policy, Department of Transportation Matthew Pottinger, Assistant to the President and Deputy National Security Advisor Rob Blair, Assistant to the President and Senior Advisor to the Chief of Staff Joseph Grogan, Assistant to the President and Director of the Domestic Policy Council Christopher Liddell, Assistant to the President and Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy Coordination Derek Kan, Executive Associate Director, Office of Management and Budget PRESS: FOX - "Fox and Friends"; ABC TV local; NBC TV local; PBS NewsHour; WTOP radio X2 Jan. 31, 2020 - Another truly amazing day. Sequested in the White House essentially all day working out a proposal to put before the POTUS that would restrict travel from China. The proposal was driven largely by CDC (Marty Cetron) who felt that given the volume of people coning in from China by direct and even more importantly indirect flights it would be logistically impossible to effectively screen people at many, many airports and the diversion of people from their place of origin to selective airports would further complicate things. Also, the cases continue to sharply rise with 12000 cases and 259 deaths. Also, a NEJM report from Germany indicated that a Chinese woman came from Shanghai visited a colleague in Stockdorf Bavaria. She infected him when she had no sxs, returned to China and got sik on the plane. The german man then got sick and infected 2 other Germans. This would have bn the first truly documented case of transmission from an asymptomatic person, thus, adding to the concern about the accuracy of screening at airports. In addition, the WHO declared a PHEIC yesterday prompting Azar to declare a Public Health Emergency here in the USA. I disagreed with the latter since there were only 7 infections (6 travel) at the time. All this led to the conclusion of travel restriction. This was late in the afternoon - around 1:30-2:00 PM. The entire task force (above) plus Kellyanne Conway, Jessica Zitto (WH Coms) and a variety oof senior WH officials gatherd in the Roosevelt Room to hammer out how we would present this to the POTUS. The policy decision was: 1) Ban travel to the USA of all non-citizens who have been to China within the past 14 days. If you were in China, you need to go somewhere else (Paris, UK, etc.) until 14 days pass from the time you were in China. 2) If you are a citizen and were in the Hubei Province (includes Wuhan)