Bloomberg Law: Travel Ban Won’t Help Contain Coronavirus, House Panel Told
“The Trump administration’s travel ban isn’t the answer to combating the spreading coronavirus outbreak, the former U.S. Ebola response coordinator told a House panel. ‘We don’t have a travel ban. We have a travel band-aid right now,’ Ron Klain, who led the Obama administration’s Ebola response effort, told the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Asia, the Pacific, and Nonproliferation on Wednesday at the first congressional hearing since the outbreak occurred in late December. … The ban has 11 exemptions and is based on people’s passports, not where they’ve traveled, Klain said. The focus should be on monitoring people who have visited the Hubei province in the past 14 days, he said…” (Baumann, 2/5).

CNBC: Epidemiologist warns lawmakers: U.S. can’t keep coronavirus ‘out of our border’
“U.S. travel restrictions implemented in recent days to keep a fast-moving virus that has crippled much of China from spreading across America won’t work, a top epidemiologist told U.S. lawmakers Wednesday. ‘I have never seen instances where that has worked when we are talking about a virus at this scale,’ epidemiologist Jennifer Nuzzo, a senior scholar at Johns Hopkins University’s Center for Health Security, testified before the House Foreign Affairs subcommittee. … Other witnesses included Jennifer Bouey, senior policy researcher at the Rand Corporation, and Ron Klain, former White House Ebola response coordinator. Rep. Ami Bera, D-Calif., chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Asia, the Pacific, and Nonproliferation, announced the hearing last week…” (Lovelace/Feuer, 2/5).