NYC ERECTS QUARANTINE CHECKPOINTS.

NEW YORK • New York City will put up COVID-19 quarantine checkpoints at key entry points to ensure that incoming travellers from 35 states with outbreaks comply with the state’s 14-day quarantine mandate, Mayor Bill de Blasio said on Wednesday.

The measure underscores the determination of what was once the epicentre of the U.S. outbreak to prevent a resurgence of cases emerging elsewhere. While cases are down 5 per cent in the country, they soared last week in Oklahoma, Montana, Missouri and 17 other states.

On average, 1,000 people die a day nationwide from COVID-19 with the death toll now over 157,000 with 4.8 million cases.

“Travellers coming in from those states will be given information about the quarantine and will be reminded that it is required, not optional,” de Blasio said, adding that, under certain circumstances, fines for not observing the quarantine order could be as high as $10,000.

The Sheriff’s Office, in coordination with other law enforcement agencies, will begin deploying checkpoints at major bridge and tunnel crossings into New York City.

“This is serious stuff and it’s time for everyone to realize that if we’re going to hold at this level of health and safety in this city, and get better, we have to deal with the fact that the quarantine must be applied consistently to anyone who’s travelled,” de Blasio said.

A fifth of all new cases in New York City are from outof-state travellers, said Dr. Ted Long, who oversees the city’s contact tracing program.

Teams will be deployed at Penn Station in Midtown Manhattan on Thursday, he said, to ensure travellers stop to complete a travel form.

“We’re going to offer you things like free food delivery, help with medications, direct connections to doctors by the phone, or even a hotel stay,” Long added.

The city, which once had over 800 deaths in a single day, has reported no coronavirus fatalities for the past three days and the mayor said the city’s infection rate had been under 3 per cent for the past eight weeks.

In March, Rhode Island briefly stopped cars with New York licence plates, drawing a rebuke from New York Governor Andrew Cuomo.

In Illinois, where COVID-19 cases have risen for six weeks in a row, Chicago Public Schools will start the new academic year conducting all classes remotely, school officials said.

Governors, mayors and school district officials across the country have proposed a range of ideas for reopening schools.

The Los Angeles Unified School District and the teachers’ union have reached a tentative deal to allow the resumption of remote learning in the fall. New York City hopes to have students in classrooms one to three days each week.