A recent report by Associated Press said that US President Donald Trump faces a critical personal challenge in grappling with the new corona virus outbreak: Asking Americans to believe him after he and some of his top advisers have contradicted federal scientists in playing down the threat.
On Wednesday, Trump conducted a lengthy press conference which aimed at reassuring everyone that he has the crisis well in hand. Trump surrounded himself with his administration's top health experts. And he encouraged Americans to be prepared for the virus' potential spread.
Earlier, US public health officials confirmed that it's a matter of time, and that the virus will, inevitably, spread within the United States. The president has clashed repeatedly with scientists in his own administration and tends to see any crisis through the lens of his own reelection chances.
"I don't think it's inevitable," Trump said at the news conference, where he announced Vice President Mike Pence would lead the administration's response to the outbreak. "I think it has a chance that it could get worse. There is a chance you can get fairly substantially worse. But nothing's inevitable."
Meanwhile, a U.S. community, health officials said that a new corona virus case in California could be the first in the U.S. that has no known connection to travel abroad or another known case, a possible sign the virus is spreading in the country.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported the case Wednesday, while state officials said the person is a resident of Solano County, northeast of San Francisco, and is getting medical care in Sacramento County. They said they have begun the process of tracking down people who the patient has been in contact with, a process known as contact tracing.
All of the 59 other cases in the U.S. had traveled from abroad or had been in close contact with those who traveled. Health officials have been on high alert for so-called community spread.
Earlier U.S. cases included 14 in people who traveled back from outbreak areas in China, or their spouses; three people who were evacuated from the central China city of Wuhan; and 42 American passengers on the Diamond Princess cruise ship who were evacuated by the federal government to the U.S. from where the ship was docked in Japan.
Some of those evacuated were taken to Travis Air Force Base, which is in Solano County. A number of the earlier cases have been in California, including among some of the people taken to Travis and one in which a traveler who returned to San Benito County spread it to a spouse.
California officials have been preparing for the possibility that community spread of the virus might first surface there.
The corona outbreak, which began in China, has infected tends of thousands of people in more than three dozen countries, with the vast majority in mainland China.
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