Experts: Breaking quarantine ‘honor system’ may cause virus resurgence
A growing trend of out-ofstate travel — particularly among younger residents to coronavirus hot spots — has some local officials and health experts concerned about a COVID-19 resurgence if selfquarantine guidelines are not followed when they return home.
Town officials in places like New Canaan and Westport have already noted several new cases that have been traced to residents returning from vacations in states where there are high rates of COVID-19 infections.
New Canaan First Selectman Kevin Moynihan said the town has had four confirmed cases and five presumed positives since July 1. Moynihan said some of the infected residents recently returned from places like South Carolina and Utah, where coronavirus cases are surging.
The sudden spike in New Canaan comes after a roughly six-week period, from the end of May to July 1, when the town recorded only five presumed positive cases — two of which were retested and came back negative — out of about 3,200 tests administered.
“The indications we have is that it wasn’t community transmission, from people eating downtown, or going to the grocery store,” Moynihan said. “They had some connection to somebody outside of town.”
Mark Cooper, executive director of the WestportWeston Health District, said he’s seen a similar trend. In Westport, which was an early epicenter for the virus in Connecticut, there have been recent cases linked to out-of-state travel, Cooper said.
“Like New Canaan, I am aware of a case or two involving residents returning from out-of-state hot spots,” Cooper said. “Out-of-state travelers are supposed to voluntarily self-isolate upon return to Connecticut. It is apparent many do not. Part of the problem is that the mandate is voluntary.”
Travelers to Connecticut, New York and New Jersey are supposed to quarantine for 14 days or test negative for the illness when arriving here from any of the 19 states listed in a travel advisory. The advisory was established last month by Gov. Ned Lamont and his counterparts in New York and New Jersey to help control the coronavirus spread in the tri-state area as infection rates climb in other parts of the nation.
However, self-isolating when returning home is on the “honor system” with no way of enforcing it, Dr. Zane Saul, chief of infectious disease at Bridgeport Hospital, pointed out.
Saul said out-of-state travel, and flouting of the governor’s quarantine order, are two of the biggest threats to the work that’s been done to mitigate the virus in Connecticut.
“We’re very concerned because we’ve done an incredible job in Connecticut bringing our case numbers way down to single digits and we’ve kept it that way,” Saul said. “We’ve kept hospitalizations down, kept deaths down. So now we introduce these extraneous factors where people are going to travel. Quarantine is on the honor system and people have to respect that and have to realize if they’ve been to one of those states, it goes beyond wearing masks and social distancing. They have to stay in their house for 14 days.”
In places like New Canaan, Westport and other Gold Coast towns with highly mobile, affluent residents, there is a trend to clear out during the summer.
“The more mobile a community is, the greater the risk, particularly if they travel to these high-risk states where rates are rapidly increasing,” said Dr. Michael Parry, chief of infectious disease at Stamford Health.
But, according to Saul, residents in more mobile communities where there were early spikes in March, like Westport, appeared to have learned their lesson. They also have the means to more successfully quarantine than people living in higher-density parts of the state, he said.
“I think the same ways they have the means to travel, I think they’re using all those means also to quarantine,” Saul said.
According to Moynihan, many New Canaan residents depart for islands like Nantucket, or Martha’s Vineyard, where public ferry transport to and from the mainland is often needed. Others head for beaches down South in large numbers.
Moynihan said the town can’t ban residents or even municipal employees from traveling. All he can do is remind them about the importance of quarantining once they get home.
“That’s going to be our challenge, people do want to go on vacation and some are going to hot-spot states,” Moynihan said. “Unfortunately, a town like New Canaan has a lot of people predisposed to traveling.”
Recent reports nationally describe the role young people have played in spreading the virus as the weather has warmed and social gatherings that were briefly paused have resumed. In New Canaan, at least one case was linked to a teenager returning from South Carolina, Moynihan said.
Elsewhere, local officials and medical professionals are seeing a trend in which younger people returning from high-risk areas are not taking quarantine orders seriously.
“Many younger people are not self-isolating when they may have mild symptoms and not social distancing,” Cooper said. “As a result, we are seeing an increased number of cases in younger people.”
Health experts said the continued success of reducing the rate of infections in Connecticut will hinge on the unenforceable compliance of residents returning from their summer sojourns.
“We obviously don’t live in a totalitarian state where they can force you to stay in your house and most people obviously feel if they’ve traveled and taken precautions maybe it isn’t necessary,” Parry said. “We don’t have cameras to watch people and we trust they know the ramifications and will be responsible. But we know many will bend the recommendations a bit.”