In a primetime Oval Office address, President Donald Trump announces a 30-day travel ban on foreign travel to the U.S. from most European countries as COVID-19 cases surge across the globe.
Trump’s TV address came the same day the World Health Organization officially declared the disease a pandemic. U.K. travelers were not included in the restrictions, nor were American citizens or their immediate family members or legal permanent U.S. residents.
A week later, the State Department issued an advisory that U.S. citizens avoid all international travel because of the pandemic and that those abroad should return home immediately.
Eventually spreading to every corner of the globe, as of April 2023 more than 763 million people had contracted the virus worldwide, and nearly 7 million had died from it. The first U.S. vaccinations for COVID-19 were administered on December 14, 2020.
