NEW YORK | New York State is now quarantining visitors from 16 US states where the pandemic is progressing, a doubling of the number of states compared to last week, Governor Andrew Cuomo said on Tuesday.
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“We now have 16 states that meet the quarantine criteria (…), 16 states are now subject to quarantine in New York,” said the governor.
Andrew Cuomo last week announced an initial list of eight states in the southern and western United States under quarantine, including Florida and Texas.
The new list also includes California, the most populous state in the country. The 16 states involved represent a total population equivalent to nearly half of the US population.
This extension confirms the fear of New York (state which was weeks during the epicenter of the epidemic in the United States and has recorded more than 31,000 deaths from the coronavirus according to Johns Hopkins University) of seeing the epidemic now in net ebb coming back like a boomerang.
“We are trying to keep the infection away from New York,” the governor said. After a first wave of contamination brought to the American economic capital by European visitors, “we fear that (visitors from other infected states) will come to New York and cause the same problem,” he said.
The 16 states whose visitors are supposed to quarantine themselves upon arrival in New York State are Alabama, Arkansas, South and North Carolina, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi , Tennessee and Texas in the South of the country, and California, Arizona, Nevada, Utah and Idaho in the West, plus Iowa in the Midwest.
Visitors to these states will also be subject to quarantine in neighboring Connecticut and New Jersey, whose governors said last week would adopt the same measures as New York.
It remains to be seen how such a measure can be applied, since there is no border control between States.
Mr Cuomo had said last week that anyone failing to meet quarantine risked a fine of $ 1,000.
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