Connecticut, New York and New Jersey are considering a 14-day quarantine for travelers coming from states like Florida, Arizona and Texas. Those states have seen an increase in coronavirus cases.
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, in several cable news interviews over the past couple of days, has talked about the possibility of imposing a 14-day quarantine for those who travel from the 20 plus other states where the rate of the virus is on the increase. He spoke about it Tuesday morning on MSNBC’s Morning Joe.
“We are seriously looking at that,” Cuomo said.
Cuomo says he’s talking with the governors of New Jersey and Connecticut about possibly imposing a quarantine soon.
New York, once the nation’s epicenter of the disease, now has some of the lowest rates of infection and transmission of all of the states. Over 48,000 people were tested for coronavirus on Monday, and 1.2% tested positive. Twenty-seven New Yorkers died of the disease on June 22.
But the governor says without a cohesive federal policy for all of the states, he can’t stop the virus from crossing the state’s borders. And he criticized President Donald Trump and his administration for not advocating for greater precautions. He says states that have reopened with few restraints are seeing a “boomerang” effect, with virus rates spiking.
“We tested the president’s theory, a political reopening. COVID was a political issue. It wasn’t. It was a virus. You had to be smart. You had to use science,” Cuomo said. “And those states that used science are doing much better than those states that made this a political issue. That’s a fact.”
Connecticut Governor Ned Lamont says he’s particularly concerned because of the number of passenger flights from Florida that land at Connecticut’s Bradley Airport every day.
“Florida has an infection rate right now, a positivity rate that’s about 10 times what we have here in Connecticut. And that’s true of other states like Texas and Arizona as well.”
He says Connecticut might solicit hotels to help enforce the quarantine.
“Maybe some people don’t want to quarantine. They’d be more likely to get the test before coming, say 72 hours before you come to Connecticut. That’s the way Maine and some other places are doing now. So you show that certificate at the hotel when you get there. It says okay, you can come and stay here and you don't have to quarantine.”
Lamont says he’s working out the details with neighboring states and the hotel industry.
