Covid-19 : Trump Drops Idea of Quarantining New York Region

US President Donald Trump has backed away from imposing a quarantine in the New York area, instead directing that a "strong travel advisory" be issued for the region to limit the spread of the new coronavirus.

The announcement on Twitter came late on Saturday as criticism grew over Trump's earlier call to prohibit travel in and out of virus hotspots in the states of New York, New Jersey and Connecticut. 

As the deadly coronavirus spread across the United States between late January and early March, large-scale testing of people who might have been infected did not happen because of technical flaws, regulatory hurdles, business-as-usual bureaucracies and lack of leadership at multiple levels.

The three federal health ag​​​encies responsible for detecting and combating ​pandemic threats failed to prepare quickly enough, a Times investigation found. Even as scientists looked at China and sounded alarms, none of the agencies’ directors conveyed the urgency required to spur a no-holds-barred defense, according to interviews with more than 50 current and former public health officials, administration officials, senior scientists and company executives.