Published
Feb 23, 2020, 10:13 am SGT

WASHINGTON (NYTIMES) - US President Donald Trump was infuriated that 14 US citizens who had tested positive for coronavirus were permitted to return this week to the United States, said two senior administration officials.

The decision took the President, a self-declared "germophobe", by surprise.

Officials at the State Department decided to bring back the citizens, who had been quarantined on the Diamond Princess cruise ship in Japan, after consulting with a senior official at the Department of Health and Human Services.

But officials at the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention objected, concerned that the passengers, among hundreds of Americans being evacuated from the ship, could spread the virus.

News organisations reported on the decision on Monday (Feb 17), and the passengers arrived in the United States that day.

Mr Trump, furious at not having been briefed on the Americans who had tested positive, relayed his anger to Mr Alex Azar, the Health and Human Services Secretary, and other top officials.

They then alerted the White House inter-agency task force on the coronavirus, which Mr Azar oversees.

One official said Mr Trump views shutting the borders to infected people as critical to keeping the country safe and wants to be seen as managing a proper response.

The top State Department official on the task force is Mr Stephen Biegun, the Deputy Secretary of State.

During the early legs of a four-day trip to the West Coast meant to bolster his re-election effort, Mr Trump paid close attention to Fox News' coverage of the Diamond Princess that played aboard Air Force One.

Word of Mr Trump's anger had already begun circulating among officials on Tuesday morning. The Washington Post first reported on it on Friday.

In 2014, during an Ebola crisis in Africa, Mr Trump, who was then a private citizen, angrily demanded that the Obama administration cancel flights and bar anyone infected with the virus from entering the country - including American medical workers who had gone to Africa to help.

"KEEP THEM OUT OF HERE!" he wrote in a July 31 tweet after learning that one American medical worker would be evacuated to Atlanta from Liberia.

"The US cannot allow EBOLA infected people back," Mr Trump wrote on Twitter the next day, adding: "People that go to far away places to help out are great - but must suffer the consequences!"

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https://www.straitstimes.com/world/united-states/trump-was-furious-that-cruise-ship-passengers-with-coronavirus-were-brought-back?