President Donald Trump announced the first coronavirus death in the U.S. Saturday during a press conference, adding that additional travel restrictions will be imposed on new countries.
The president and Vice President Mike Pence gave updates about the coronavirus, noting that one high-risk patient died in the U.S. from it.
The woman who died was from Washington state. Trump added that 22 people total in America have been diagnosed with the coronavirus and that many of them are well on their way to recovery.
Trump has a meeting on Monday to discuss a vaccine to combat the ever-growing virus, he said.
“As an important part of our efforts, on Monday I’ll be meeting with the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world actually,” Trump announced. “They’ll be coming to the White House, and we’re talking about a vaccine and developing very quickly, and they’ve already started working on it. Developing very rapidly a vaccine … to combat the virus.”
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“Since the early stages of the foreign outbreak, the administration has taken the most aggressive action in modern history to confront the spread of this disease,” Trump said during the press conference. (RELATED: Traveler ‘Cleared’ Of Coronavirus Appears On Fox News, Coughs On Child While Saying ‘It Is Contagious’)
Trump and Pence also announced that the U.S. will expand its current travel restrictions on China to include Iran, Italy and South Korea.
“The president took unprecedented action to suspend all travel into the United States from China,” Pence said. “It simply had never been done before by any previous administration.”
“The task force met this morning and brought the president a range of options, and at his direction we will be doing the following. First the president authorized action today to add additional travel restrictions on Iran. … We are urging Americans to not travel to the areas in Italy and the areas in South Korea that are most affected by the coronavirus.”
While restrictions were previously in place for Iran, the administration announced Saturday it would be expanded to include “any foreign national who has visited Iran within the last 14 days,” Pence said. He added that the administration raised the travel advisory to its highest level, which is level four, regarding travel to Italy and South Korea.
The president said that while China’s travel restrictions caused controversy, it allowed professionals to “get together and figure it all out,” along with slowing the spread of the disease into America. He said that the administration believes the professionals have, in fact, figured things out regarding the disease, although he did not give specifics.
“We move very early, that was one of the decisions we made that really turned out to be a lifesaver, in a sense. Big lifesaver,” Trump said.