The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
Visitor quarantine launched
The governors of New Jersey, New York and Connecticut on Wednesday announced mandatory, voluntary quarantines for out-of-state visitors from COVID-19 hotspots that will likely hinder the summer tourist season, but discourage regions with rising coronavirus infections from possibly spreading the virus here.
The advisory, which currently has no legal consequences for violators, will take effect early Thursday. The initial effort will include signage at Bradley International Airport, hotels, Airbnb locations and social media.
Like other measures taken by Gov. Ned Lamont during
the pandemic, he’s depending on people to voluntarily submit to the public health measures. But he said Wednesday that he is considering putting some legal teeth into an executive order that will accompany the announcement.
The tri-state region is recovering from the pandemic, while dozens of other states are experiencing record increases in COVID-19 infections. Lamont, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy in recent days conferred to take stronger action, and with short notice, Cuomo led a late-morning news from Albany to make the announcement to join Massachusetts in mandatory quarantines.
“We’ve reluctantly decided this is the thing we have to do,” Lamont said during the video conference with Cuomo and Murphy. “We’ve seen real community spread.”
Travelers from states with new positive tests higher than 1 per 10,000 residents or a 10 percent or higher rate of positive tests over a seven-day rolling average, will be required to quarantine for 14 days upon entering New York, New Jersey or Connecticut.
Cuomo said that currently, visitors from Alabama, Arkansas, Arizona, Florida, North Carolina, South Carolina, Washington, Utah and Texas would have to submit to the quarantine orders.
The list of states where such community spread has occurred, will be updated weekly, said Dr. Deidre Gifford, acting commissioner of the state Department of Public Health.
On Wednesday, the DPH reported an additional 10 fatalities linked to COVID-19, bringing the state’s total in the pandemic to 4,287. There was a net reduction of 14 patients, for a total of 124 hospitalizations, while 14 new COVID-19 cases among the latest 1,175 tests was less than 1.2 percent. The state surpassed 400,000 total tests on Wednesday.
The governors have also discussed the possibility of allowing visitors who do not wish to quarantine for two weeks to present proof of recent negative tests for the virus upon their arrival here, and Lamont indicated that such guidelines will be forthcoming.
“It arrives on a jet airplane but it’s not going to leave on a jet airplane,” Lamont said in the joint news conference.
In a follow-up briefing with Connecticut reporters in which he used the same line, Lamont said that he would study the need for possible legal consequences for travelers who ignore the order. “But it can come back and we can have a second wave arriving by jet airplane a second time, and right now it wouldn’t necessarily be coming from China. It could be coming from one of six or seven or eight states that have a very high positivity rate.”
The governor said it’s alarming that the virus is spreading in some states to broad swaths of the population, including younger adults. “If it was limited to the nursing homes or the prisons or something containable, perhaps we would be less concerned,” Lamont said. “We reluctantly came to the conclusion that this is what we’ve got to do to make sure that our region stays safe and our states stay safe.”
While some states including Arkansas, Florida and Oklahoma created mandatory 14-day quarantines for visitors from New York, New Jersey and Connecticut when this region was the epicenter of the nation’s COVID-19 outbreak, now, as it subsides, the Northeast states will likely create their own orders.
“We’re blessed with good neighbors,” Lamont said. “This is a good, strong regional effort. We’re slowly and methodically opening up our state. I see what’s happening in over half of the states around this country right now. Connecticut’s not an island and our region isn’t an island. We can be careful by maintaining the protocols that are working for us here in Connecticut, here throughout the region, and also being strict in terms of who comes in and visits.”
Cuomo noted that as many as three million people from Europe landed in the tri-state area between January and March, after the virus had migrated from China to Europe.
“By the time the federal government figured it out, we had the virus spread all through the community, so we had the highest numbers to deal with in the country,” Cuomo said, crediting Murphy and Lamont with being sources of strength in coordinating plans. “This was a situation that nobody had really faced before.”
Massachusetts has a similar quarantine in effect and Rhode Island requires 14-day quarantines for people from states with stay-at-home orders.
Meanwhile, the European Union is planning on prohibiting visitors from the United States because of the nation’s soaring infection and fatality rates.
“Connecticut’s not an island and our region isn’t an island. We can be careful by maintaining the protocols that are working for us here in Connecticut, here throughout the region, and also being strict in terms of who comes in and visits.” Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont