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Latest group of Americans released from quarantine amid coronavirus outbreak

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The first Americans held under federal quarantine in more than 50 years are finally walking free.

A new group of U.S. evacuees airlifted out of Wuhan, China, has completed 14 days of mandatory federal quarantine and been cleared to go home. CBS Evening News correspondent Carter Evans reports on the scene as more than 100 evacuees boarded buses straight from military bases to commercial airports in California, while dozens more walked out of a base in Texas after the CDC gave the all-clear. The releases mark a turning point in an outbreak response unlike anything the U.S. government has run in half a century.

• Over 100 evacuees held at Travis Air Force Base in Solano County and Marine Corps Air Station Miramar in San Diego were bussed directly to Sacramento International Airport and San Diego International Airport to catch commercial flights home.
• The CDC announced on February 20 that 90 cleared evacuees at Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland in Texas were authorized to leave, saying they posed no health risk to surrounding communities.
• These releases mark the first time in more than 50 years that the CDC has issued nationwide quarantine orders, applied to Americans repatriated on State Department charter flights after China locked down Wuhan on January 23.

A Quarantine Without Precedent

The CDC’s decision to invoke federal quarantine powers wasn’t a routine move. According to health officials, it was the first time in more than 50 years the agency had issued nationwide isolation orders on American citizens returning to U.S. soil. The evacuees arrived on State Department charter flights as part of a broader repatriation effort launched after Chinese authorities sealed off Wuhan, a city of 11 million people, on January 23 in an attempt to contain the outbreak spreading through Hubei province.

Hundreds of Americans were flown out in the following weeks and funneled into holding at military installations rather than released straight into their home communities. The scale of the response, and the legal authority behind it, set a template that health officials in Solano County, San Diego and San Antonio had not had to use in living memory.

Fourteen Days Under Watch

Life inside quarantine followed a strict routine. Evacuees were housed in temporary lodging on base and checked repeatedly for fever and respiratory symptoms, the telltale signs officials were watching for as the virus continued to spread through China. Anyone showing symptoms would have been isolated separately and referred for testing; those who made it through the full 14 days without incident were cleared for release.

The CDC said the 90 evacuees leaving Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland posed no health risk to the surrounding community.

That reassurance mattered. Local residents near Travis, Miramar and Lackland had spent two weeks watching buses and military transports come and go, and the CDC’s public sign-off was meant to close the loop before the evacuees scattered back into commercial air travel.

From the Tarmac to the Terminal

At Travis Air Force Base and MCAS Miramar, the moment of release looked almost mundane: evacuees loaded onto buses and were driven straight to Sacramento International Airport and San Diego International Airport to book commercial flights home, no different from any other traveler at the gate. In San Antonio, the 90 evacuees cleared out of Lackland on February 20 after the CDC’s announcement, closing out one of the last groups still under observation.

For families who had spent two weeks tracking updates from outside base fences, the buses pulling up to airport curbsides were the visible proof the ordeal was over. The outbreak itself was still accelerating in China and beginning to draw wider concern in the U.S. — a story CBS and other outlets were tracking closely out of Beijing — but for these evacuees, the quarantine chapter had ended.

What happens next depends on whether more Americans still need evacuating out of Hubei province, and whether the CDC has to lean on the same 14-day, base-by-base playbook again. For now, the buses rolling up to Sacramento and San Diego airports are the closest thing to a finish line this group is going to get — and for the people who’d already made the decision to get out of China entirely, it’s a reminder of just how fast the situation on the ground was moving.