Uncontrolled Spread: Why COVID-19 Crushed Us and How We Can Defeat the Next Pandemic

by Scott Gottlieb

We would learn later that by February, the West Coast was heavily seeded with cases imported from China that circumvented our travel restrictions.20 It turns out that the February 2 ban on air travel from China was quite leaky. An estimated 40,000 American residents had returned to the US from China through major airports after the ban took effect.21 And in the month before the travel restrictions, nearly 300,000 people had traveled into the US from China.22 Airport screening for symptoms was also porous, and there was no way to identify asymptomatic carriers. Meanwhile, the East Coast was being seeded heavily with cases coming from Italy. Wuhan and Italy had close ties. Italy was the first G-7 nation to join China’s investment and infrastructure project, the Belt and Road Initiative, and many Chinese textile workers had immigrated to Prato, the historical capital of Italy’s fashion business.23 Garments would be manufactured in Wuhan, and shipped to Prato, where the final stitches were “made in Italy.”