San Francisco's mayor has declared a state of emergency in the city after health officials warned of the deadly coronavirus spreading across the United States, The Independent reports.
"Although there are still zero confirmed cases in San Francisco residents, the global picture is changing rapidly, and we need to step-up preparedness," San Francisco Mayor, London Breed, said in press release on Tuesday. "We see the virus spreading in new parts of the world every day, and we are taking the necessary steps to protect San Franciscans from harm."
Check out this CBS News report into the outbreak that has been dominating the headlines over the last few weeks:According to Newsweek, officials at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have said that further spread of the virus is now inevitable.
It also reports that the Trump administration's response to the crisis has been criticized, with the emergency response budget of $2.5 billion being slammed as inadequate.
"It seems to me at the outset that this request for the money, the supplemental, is lowballing it, possibly, and you can't afford to do that," said Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) to Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar during a Tuesday hearing on the matter, according to The Hill. "If you lowball something like this, you'll pay for it later."
Democratic Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer also expressed his criticism on Tuesday, saying on the Senate floor that the administration had shown "towering and dangerous incompetence" in their response to the pandemic.
"Unfortunately what we are seeing today is a political effort by the Left and some in the media to distract and disturb the American people with fearful rhetoric and palace intrigue," White House Deputy Press Secretary Judd Deere said in a statement to Newsweek. "The United States economy is the strongest in the world thanks to the leadership and policies of President Trump. The virus remains low risk domestically because of the containment actions taken by this administration since the first of the year."