Today, the governors of New York, New Jersey and Connecticut have doubled the number of states whose residents are required to quarantine upon arrival in the Tri-State area, bringing the total to sixteen.
The move represents a joint effort by governors Andrew Cuomo, Phil Murphy and Ned Lamont to protect the progress they’ve made in containing the spread of COVID-19 thus far, following the Tri-State region’s battle against a massive surge of infections earlier in the course of the pandemic.
Last week, travel restrictions requiring all visitors to adhere to the standard fourteen-day quarantine were established for visitors coming from eight states, which had recently emerged as viral hotspots: Alabama, Arkansas, Arizona, Florida, North Carolina, South Carolina, Utah and Texas.
New York’s Governor Cuomo defined the criteria for states whose residents will be affected by the Tri-State travel restrictions as, “any state where ten of every 100,000 people test positive on a rolling seven-day basis, or where the positivity rate in the total population is ten percent, also on a seven-day rolling basis,” reported NBC New York.
This week, eight more states have passed that threshold: California, Georgia, Iowa, Idaho, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nevada and Tennessee. Anyone from any of the sixteen affected states who violates the quarantine order will find themselves facing heavy fines.
New Jersey’s Governor Murphy told NBC, “Our numbers have come way down, probably as much as any American state, but we paid a huge price. We’ve gone through hell. The last thing we want to do is go through hell again.”
The new precautions are hardly surprising, given that the number of new COVID-19 cases arising in other U.S. states are hitting unprecedented highs. America’s top infectious disease expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci, told the Senate today that he foresees the daily count of new cases reaching 100,000 if trends continue. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) yesterday warned that the present surge in infection rates may take the pandemic to levels that the country is simply unable to control.
Governor Cuomo won’t risk a new wave of infection coming to New York, which has been by far the U.S.’ most-impacted state, suffering almost 400,000 confirmed COVID-19 cases and nearly 25,000 related deaths. Yet, officials acknowledge that the actual tolls in both categories are probably much higher.
“Time to wake up, America,” Governor Cuomo said. “If that spread comes to New York, we could have to do this all over again. Doing this once in life is enough. We don’t need to climb another mountain.”