Gov. Andrew Cuomo is contemplating a quarantine order on travelers to New York from other states with high rates of the novel coronavirus, including Florida.
The governor, in several cable news interviews over the past couple 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 increasing.
“We are seriously looking at that,” Cuomo said Tuesday morning on MSNBC’s Morning Joe.
Cuomo said he’s talking with the governors of the neighboring states 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 COVID-19 on Monday, and 1.2% tested positive. Twenty-seven New Yorkers died of the disease on Monday.
But the governor said without a cohesive federal policy for all of the states, he can’t stop the virus from crossing New York's borders. And he criticized President Donald Trump and his administration for not advocating for greater precautions, saying 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.”
Cuomo said New York continues to prepare for a possible second wave of the virus in the fall, with requirements that hospitals keep 30% of their beds free for potential COVID-19 patients, and that the health care facilities work together, and keep fully stocked with personal protective equipment and other supplies.
