New Strain of COVID Causes Gov. Cuomo to Mandate Testing of New York-Bound U.K. Air Passengers

By Yehudit Garmaise

  New York is not a country, the governor pointed out, but New York state has just joined 120 other countries in asking U.K. airlines to test their passengers before allowing them to board planes that are arriving in New York state.

   A new strain of COVID has been identified in England, and Prime Minister Boris Johnson has said that the strain is 70% more transmittable than COVID-19.

  Three airlines, British airways, Delta, and Virgin Atlantic bring several thousand passengers into New York a day, and “this is a serious problem, the governor said this morning. “We have a public health emergency.”

    After being personally asked by the governor, starting tomorrow, British Airways has voluntarily agreed to test passengers for COVID before they board airplanes that are headed for new York State.  

  “I want to thank British Airways, who could have taken a different path,” said the governor who added that he has asked Delta and Virgin Atlantic to also test passengers before boarding New York-bound planes. “If the other airlines don’t agree, then New York State will pursue other options.

   “I would not be doing my job if I let federal incompetence compromise New Yorkers’ health. The United States has nothing to mandate testing of passengers or to halt travel. Doing nothing is just not a viable option in New York.”

   “New York state will be victimized again. I have lived this, and you lived this already in the spring.

    “This is how we had that New York ambush in the first place, when people said, ‘Don’t worry the coronavirus is in China, and then it went to Europe, but then it came here from Europe.’

    “If this new strain is more transmittable than COVID-19, then this is a major problem.”

    Gov. Cuomo explained that New Yorkers already learned the lesson of allowing infected people into the country “the hard way.”

   “Why don’t we act intelligently for a change?” Gov. Cuomo asked.

     The U.K., the governor said, does not yet know whether the new strain of COVID has a higher rate of death or whether the vaccines are effective with the new strain, but what Gov. Cuomo did say is that, “The strain is so serious that the UK has closed down again.”

   Gov. Cuomo that just last week, British Prime Minister Johnson has said that he is not cancelling the winter holidays in England, but that the new strain is so serious that Johnson has now said he is closing down parts of England. 

   “This is serious, my friends,” the governor said. “And we are on notice about it.”

 (Mike Groll/Office of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo)