New York's Out-Of-State Visitors Must Quarantine, Cuomo Says

NEW YORK CITY — New York, once the epicenter of the nation's novel coronavirus crisis, put in place a travel advisory mandating quarantines for travelers from states with spiking COVID-19 numbers, Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced Wednesday.

New York, Connecticut and New Jersey will enact midnight the joint travel advisory that demands visitors from risky states undergo a 14-day isolation period, said Cuomo.

"Government has to work now, this is not normal politics," said Cuomo. "This is government actually having to perform a job."

Cuomo suggested enforcement would come from New Yorkers who will say to out-of-state visitors, "Aren't you supposed to be in quarantine?"

Fines vary between $2,000 and $10,000 for people caught disobeying the mandatory quarantine, Cuomo said.

"If you give people time, what you actually do is force people to rush back," Cuomo said, explaining the almost immediate implementation. "It's better to implement it quickly so you don't cause a rush at the airports."

The quarantine order applies to travelers from states with positive COVID-19 test rates higher than 10 per 100,000 residents or states with more than 10 percent positivity rate over a seven-day rolling average, Cuomo said.

Currently, Alabama, Arkansas, Arizona, Florida, North Carolina, South Carolina, Washington, Utah and Texas meet those criteria.

New Yorkers who visit high-risk states and return must also submit to the two-week quarantine, Cuomo said.

The order comes days after New York was found to be one of only three U.S. states on track to contain the virus, a major turnaround for a state that, only a few weeks ago, was the world's COVID-19 epicenter.

"We went from one of the highest infection rates to one of the lowest and we did it by making decisions based on the science, the data and the facts - not on politics," Cuomo said Tuesday.

"New York is finally coming back and I can't stress enough how important it is that we don't blow this incredible progress now. "