Fauci says Trump agreed not to invoke a strict quarantine after intensive White House discussions

Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said on CNN's "State of the Union" that it was important not to enforce something that would create "a bigger difficulty," and instead issue a travel advisory for the New York metro area.

"After discussions with the President we made it clear and he agreed, it would be much better to do what's called a strong advisory. The reason for that is you don't want to get to the point that you're enforcing things that would create a bigger difficulty, morale and otherwise, when you could probably accomplish the same goal," Fauci told CNN's Jake Tapper.

Fauci said about 56% of the country's new infections are coming from the New York City area.

After the number of reported US coronavirus deaths doubled to more than 2,000 within two days, officials are advising residents of New York, New Jersey and Connecticut not to travel domestically.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued the travel advisory Saturday, urging residents of the three states to "refrain from nonessential domestic travel for 14 days effective immediately." The states would have "full discretion" on implementing the advisory, which exempts employees in critical fields.

"What you don't want is people traveling from that area to other areas of the country and inadvertently and innocently infecting other individuals," Fauci said. "We felt the better way to do this would be an advisory as opposed to a very strict quarantine. And the president agreed, and that's why he made that determination last night."