A microscopic view of the Coronavirus from the CDC. https://www.cdc.gov/media/subtopic/images.htm
By Derek Stoeckmann, JHBL Staff Member
Over the past 2 months, the Coronavirus has taken the world by storm, with over 100,000 reported infections and over 3,400 deaths. Due to China’s truant and condemnable response and coverup of COVID-19, countries around the world are scrambling to try to contain the spread of Coronavirus. What legal tools can the United States federal government and state governments implement to mitigate, or even stop the spread of the virus? How can the government minimize the effect the virus has on the national and local economy?
Background
On December 31, 2019, China alerted the World Health Organization (“WHO”) of several cases of highly unusual pneumonia in the Hubei Province, specifically Wuhan, the major port city for the province. Less than a week later, WHO declared that this was not a recurrence of the SARS disease, and was in fact a novel virus, later named 2019-nCoV, or more commonly coronavirus. Subsequently, the Chinese government shut down the Huanan Seafood Market. Less than 10 days later, China announced the first death from the Coronavirus, an elderly man who had purchased food from the wet market.
Over the next few weeks following the first death, the numbers of infections and deaths resulting from the illness have grown exponentially and have led to the quarantine of the Hubei Province. Despite these efforts, healthcare professionals have suggested these precautions may have been too little, too late as the virus has already reached every continent. During the past few weeks, 164 cases and 11 deaths have been recorded in the United States across 19 states, and those figures are excluding the relatively minor cases of which there are estimated to be in the millions worldwide that have gone unreported. The most alarming fact is that in the United States citizens have contracted the virus without having traveled to countries with known victims or coming into contact with someone known to have had who had the virus. This type of spread has been termed a “community spread” or contraction from an unknown source.
International Response
Countries such as Italy, Iran, Japan, and South Korea are among the most afflicted outside of China, and, based on this information, several governments and airlines have announced travel restrictions or have cancelled flights to these areas. China, taking extremely draconian measures, has quarantined the city of Wuhan (population of 11 Million). The quarantine has done little to stop the transmission of the disease, especially considering it is transmissible during the incubation period where there are no observable symptoms and it has already reached every continent. China currently is operating coronavirus checkpoints within mainland cities. In Hong Kong medical workers are demanding the government entirely close the border between the special administrative region and mainland China.
In response to the potential economic impact on China, Beijing has announced a 50% reduction on tariffs for $75 Billion on U.S. imported goods. Several of China’s neighbors such as Taiwan and South Korea have asked their governments for tax relief, something that might be commonplace around the world in the hardest hit regions.
Recently, other nations besides China have implemented a quarantine period of 14 days for travelers from high risk areas. Australia has said that it will use a little-known biosecurity law to either place persons in home detention or designate certain places as “out of bounds” to minimize the spread of the virus. While Israel has even gone so far as to recently put in place total travel bans on non-Israelis from Eastern Asia to prevent the spread of Coronavirus within its borders.
In Italy, the government has placed similar draconian quarantines on the Northern regions of Lombardy and Veneto, home to Milan and Venice. As the New York Times reported, the Italian government will essentially lock down the northern part of the country – restricting movements in a highly populated area that is the center of Italy’s manufacturing and financial base. Preventive measures in the north will ban funerals and cultural events and require people to keep a distance of at least one meter from one another in public. Soldiers and police will be empowered to enforce these precautions and people will be obligated to avoid movement in, out of, and within the quarantined territory. Before these steps the Italian government had already closed all of the country’s schools and placed travel restrictions on the north.
Japan will suffer massive losses if the virus leads to the cancellation of the summer Olympics in Tokyo. Such a scenario could only be the beginning as other governments around the world are advising people to avoid large gatherings such as sporting events and concerts. If the number of infected people continues to rise at the current rate, the impact on the global economy will certainly worsen, with little governments can do to mitigate the impact. Right now the future is unclear and this current state of affairs will likely persist until a vaccine is developed, tested, and distributed, or the virus fizzles out.
Domestic Response
While the U.S. has not faced a pandemic-level public health threat since the Spanish Flu after World War I, there are laws in place for such situations. The 2010 Public Health Service Act gives the federal government broad latitude to prevent the entry and spread of communicable diseases from foreign countries, or between states. This gives the federal government the power to place limits on interstate travel in commerce; however, this has never been done before. Dr. Anthony Fauci, one of the leading infectious disease doctors in the world and a member of the White House Coronavirus task force believes that community spread cases of Coronavirus will greatly increase in the United States and could prompt the United States to implement restrictions on interstate travel and commerce until the medical community has a better grasp on treating the virus and potentially developing a vaccine.
In addition to restrictions on interstate travel, the government may need to move to close school s and cancel public events with large numbers of people so the virus is not spread on a mass scale. Considering the Supreme Court upheld President Trump’s travel ban in 2017, albeit in a different context, it is possible that if the spread of the disease does not stabilize, foreign nationals could be banned from entering the United States altogether. Furthermore, if it takes as long as currently projected to produce a vaccine, any U.S. citizens returning from abroad could undergo compulsory quarantine.
Already the Coronavirus has had a significant impact on the economy and has led economists to think it may lead to an economic recession. As an emergency response, the Federal Reserve has decided to cut interest rates to minimize the likelihood of a global recession. The Federal Reserve’s move is only a temporary solution and might make a future recession harder to ease with current interest rates. The effect may worsen as there is a growing concern that the cut off from goods manufactured in China could have a global impact on supply chains. This is one area that the effect cannot be mitigated until the virus stabilizes and trade with China returns to the status quo. The G7 finance committee has vowed to protect the global economy but it did not announce any specific plans on how it intends to accomplish this goal. The International Monetary Fund also has announced it will consider all possibilities, such as emergency financing, policy advice, and technical assistance to combat the effect. These tools will likely do nothing to mitigate the drastic drop in both supply and demand of goods in the global marketplace as the supply chains are disrupted, leaving manufacturers and retailers without goods and without buyers as individuals self-quarantine themselves from fear of contracting the virus.
Beyond the economic impact, several states such as New York, California, and Washington have declared a state of emergency as a result of COVID-19. In New York, there are mandatory school closures for the foreseeable future. School officials are scrambling to put in place a contingency plan that allows teachers an avenue to educate via telecommunication. New York employers have been shutting down their Manhattan offices and employees are to either work from home or satellite offices. As an emergency response to the increased risk of travel plans being cancelled, Governor Cuomo has passed legislation that mandates NY citizens be able to purchase insurance for their future travel plans from major providers.
In response to the outbreak, state executives have been asking their legislatures what they are enabled to do in response. In Texas, the governor is able to hold and/or order individuals to remain in quarantine, detention, or mandate vaccination once, and if, a cure is developed. However, one of the main issues for state governments is whether they have the authority to implement such draconian measures as China or Italy have, given our far more limited numbers of those infected or deceased. Unfortunately, it will likely be too late to effectively put in place measures that will mitigate the spread of the virus as the only effective way to slow its spread is through very authoritarian measures. In my view, it would be prudent for government to put severe criminal penalties on those who violate quarantine orders in order to protect the public at large, especially with the growing “community spread” risk of the virus.
Sources
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/07/world/europe/coronavirus-italy.html
https://www.centerforsecuritypolicy.org/2020/01/27/did-wuhan-coronavirus-escape-from-a-lab-in-china/
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/03/01/pence-azar-coronavirus-morning-shows-118411
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/01/timeline-china-coronavirus-spread-200126061554884.html
https://www.thedailybeast.com/chinas-deadly-coronavirus-cover-up-is-getting-worse
https://www.foxnews.com/media/dr-anthony-fauci-coronavirus-spread-us
https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2020/03/politics/coronavirus-trump-cdc-timeline/
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-in-us.html
Derek Stoeckmann is currently a second-year law student at Suffolk University Law School. He is a staffer on the Journal of Health and Biomedical Law. Prior to law school, Derek received a Bachelor of Science from The Isenberg School of Management at The University of Massachusetts, Amherst. He can be reached at dstoeckmann@su.suffolk.edu.
Disclaimer: The views expressed in this blog are the views of the author alone and do not represent the views of JHBL or Suffolk University Law School.