New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut to Impose Quarantine on Out-of-State Visitors

New York - It’s the ban Gov. Andrew Cuomo has been itching at for months.

Visitors from Florida and ten other states are banned, effective midnight tonight, from entering New York, New Jersey and Connecticut due to fears that the coronavirus may spread.

Cuomo and Gov. Ron DiSantis of Florida had been fighting ever since Florida imposed a quarantine on travelers from New York, when the Empire State was a Covid hotspot and Florida had few cases. Now the tables are turned, with New York having few cases and Florida reaching thousands of new cases every day.

Now it’s New York’s turn to penalize Florida for the rising Covid deaths. Cuomo, along with Gov. Phil Murphy of New Jersey and Gov. Ned Lamont of Connecticut, announced Wednesday that anyone from states with “significant community spread of Covid-19” are required to quarantine for a 14-day period.

This quarantine applies to any person arriving from a state with a positive test rate higher than 10 per 100,000 residents over a seven-day average, or a state with a 10 percent positivity rate over a seven-day rolling average. Violators will be subject to a $2,000-$10,000 fine and forced quarantine.

The only states so far affected are Alabama, Arkansas, Arizona, Florida, North Carolina, South Carolina, Washington, Utah and Texas.

"In New York we went from the highest number of cases to some of the lowest rates in the country,” Cuomo said in a statement. “No one else had to bend the curve as much as we did and now we have to make sure that the rate continues to drop in our entire region.”

Photo by: Mike Groll/Office of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo)