‘Scared and panicked’: Travellers rush to avoid virus quarantine

Amid cancelled flights, tightening global travel restrictions and looming plans to quarantine Americans returning from China, the tension at a handful of airports still receiving flights from the country mounted on Sunday as travellers described a scramble for the few remaining tickets out of China and federal officials readied military bases to house hundreds of people potentially exposed to the deadly coronavirus. Under new federal rules that apply to US-bound flights that take off after 5 p.m. Eastern time, American citizens who have been in China’s Hubei province, the epicentre of the epidemic, in the last 14 days will be subject to a quarantine of up to two weeks. Military bases said they were expecting to house about 1,000 such “evacuees.” Other US citizens who have visited mainland China will undergo a health screening and can be ordered to quarantine in their homes for up to 14 days, according to the Homeland Security Department. Under the restrictions announced by the Trump administration on Friday, foreign nationals who have been in China in the last two weeks will “generally” be denied entry into the US. Federal officials said the rules were necessary to minimize the risk of the disease spreading further in the US, where nine cases of the coronavirus had been confirmed so far, including one in the San Francisco area on Sunday. All American citizens who have traveled in China within 14 days of their arrival home to the United States will be directed to one of 11 major airports in New York, Newark, Chicago, Detroit, Dallas, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle, Honolulu, Atlanta or outside Washington. There have been nine confirmed cases in the US, but no deaths. Anxiety is intense at airports.<br/>