Coronavirus: US Travel Ban on 26 European Countries

Denmark will temporarily close its borders for non-citizens in a move to curb the spread of coronavirus, the Danish prime minister Mette Frederiksen said on Friday.

"All tourists, all travel, all vacations, and all foreigners who cannot prove a creditable purpose of entering Denmark, will be denied entrance at the Danish border," Frederiksen said at a news conference late Friday in Copenhagen.



Boston and Miami will be added to the list of 11 airports that are being used to divert passengers traveling to the US from European regions that are part of a travel ban, a senior official with US Customs and Border Protection said.

The new airports — Miami International Airport and Logan International Airport — go into effect at 11:59 p.m. Friday, the senior official said on a press call, adding that "anyone already en route is not impacted by this,"

Some background: President Trump announced the ban during an address on Wednesday. The ban would affect most foreign nationals who were in Europe's Schengen Area — 26 countries stretching from Iceland to Greece — in the past 14 days. American citizens, green card holders, some family members and a few other groups are exempt from the travel ban but will face additional health screening and restrictions when they arrive.

On Thursday, Vice President Mike Pence told CNN that Americans coming home will be funneled through 13 different airports.

“They'll be screened and then we're going to ask every American and legal resident returning to the united states to self-quarantine for 14 days," Pence said.

These are the other airports:

California: San Francisco International Airport (SFO)
California: Los Angeles International Airport, (LAX)
Georgia: Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport (ATL)
Hawaii: Daniel K. Inouye International Airport (HNL)
Illinois: Chicago O’Hare International Airport (ORD)
Michigan: Detroit Metropolitan Airport (DTW)
New Jersey: Newark Liberty International Airport (EWR)
New York: John F. Kennedy International Airport (JFK)
Texas: Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport (DFW)
Virginia: Washington-Dulles International Airport (IAD)
Washington state: Seattle-Tacoma International Airport (SEA)

France will close all nonessential stores to reduce the spread of the coronavirus across Europe.

During a news conference on Saturday, Prime Minister Edouard Philippe said the order would apply to restaurants, cafes, movie theaters, bars and nightclubs beginning at midnight, according to CNBC.



Essential providers of goods such as grocery stores, pharmacies, gas stations and public transportation will remain open to the public.

The closures come as France has confirmed 3,667 cases of the coronavirus throughout the country, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University.

World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus on Friday announced the rate of cases are increasing across Europe.



"More cases are now being reported [in Europe] every day than were reported in China at the height of its epidemic," said Tedros at a Friday press event in Geneva.

Earlier this week, WHO declared Europe the new epicenter of the outbreak.

"Right now, the epicenter — the new China — is Europe," Robert Redfield, the head of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said.





Italy is the second-most affected country outside China, and it also imposed a nationwide lockdown earlier this week. Spain is reportedly arranging similar measures as more outbreaks of the coronavirus emerge, according to the report.

France is the second-largest economy in the European Union, followed by Italy and Spain.

Germany is the E.U.'s largest economy and is canceling most public events amid the crisis. Chancellor Angela Merkel warned that the economic distress from the coronavirus could be as bad if not worse than the euro banking crisis that occurred 10 years ago, according to the report.