New Jersey on Tuesday added four states to its coronavirus quarantine travel notice and removed Delaware, bringing the list to 22 states considered COVID-19 hotspots.
Travelers, including New Jersey residents, arriving from those states are asked to voluntarily quarantine for two weeks and request a coronavirus test.
Minnesota, New Mexico, Ohio and Wisconsin were added on Tuesday.
New Jersey, Connecticut and New York jointly announced the quarantine plan last month to help protect their states from other areas with increasing cases.
States have expanded the list three times in the past three weeks. It now includes 44% of the US states.
The complete list:
- Alabama (added 06/24/20)
- Arkansas (added 06/24/20)
- Arizona (added 06/24/20)
- California (added 06/30/20)
- Florida (added 06/24/20)
- Georgia (added 06/30/20)
- Iowa (added 06/30/20)
- Idaho (added 06/30/20)
- Kansas (added 7/7/20)
- Louisiana (added 06/30/20)
- Minnesota (added 07/14/20)
- Mississippi (added 06/30/20)
- North Carolina (added 06/24/20)
- Nevada (added 06/30/20)
- New Mexico (added 07/14/20)
- Ohio (added 07/14/20)
- Oklahoma (added 7/7/20)
- South Carolina (added 06/24/20)
- Tennessee (added 06/30/20)
- Texas (added 06/24/20)
- Utah (added 06/24/20)
- Wisconsin (added 07/14/20)
Quarantine applies to any state with a positive test rate greater than 10 per 100,000 residents or a state with a positivity rate of 10% or more on a 7-day moving average. People traveling on business are exempt.
“We must remain vigilant and committed to our collective effort to beat COVID-19 and reduce the transmission rate throughout New Jersey,” Governor Phil Murphy said in a statement Tuesday. “To continue to move forward with the New Jersey reboot and recovery process, I strongly urge people arriving from these 22 states to quarantine and proactively conduct a COVID-19 test to prevent hot spots from spreading. inflame throughout our state. “
Still, enforcement in New Jersey remains an issue. Authorities say “compliance is expected,” although the self-quarantine is voluntary.
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo announced Tuesday that his state requires travelers to provide contact information and details about their trip when they arrive at airports to ensure they are following quarantine. And if they don’t provide that information, they are subject to a $ 2,000 fine.
But Murphy said Tuesday that New Jersey will not do the same.
“New York and New Jersey do things a little differently,” the governor said during a radio interview on Q 104.3-FM in New York City. “I don’t know if we will be fining people. But we are aggressively pursuing public relations and begging people for their personal responsibility. “
“If you come from an access point, we need to know, you must be quarantined, you must be tested,” he added.
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Once a coronavirus hot spot, New Jersey has seen its daily numbers drop dramatically since peaking in April and has been relatively stable in recent weeks. But dozens of other states have seen new cases on the rise in recent weeks.
Authorities said the recent increases in New Jersey were in part due to travelers arriving from other states, in addition to Garden State reopening some indoor businesses in recent weeks.
Murphy said Tuesday that he is concerned about sudden increases in other states.
“We have lived through hell,” the governor said during a separate television interview on ABC’s “Good Morning America.” “We don’t want to have to go through that again.”
“So we are very concerned,” he added. “If we could control everything within our four walls, that would be one thing. But we are the United States of America. You have to look with great concern at the waves elsewhere. ”
New Jersey on Tuesday reported 28 more deaths attributed to COVID-19 and 423 more positive tests.
The state has now reported 15,582 deaths, 13,635 laboratory-confirmed and 1,947 considered probable, with 175,5915 known cases since its first case was announced on March 4.
Meanwhile, the state’s transmission rate has remained below the critical benchmark of 1 for the past few days after jumping that mark earlier this month.
Staying below that point means, on average, that each newly infected resident passed COVID-19 to less than one other person. In other words, the spread of the virus is kept under control.
The latest rate was stable at 0.91, officials said Tuesday.
Still, Murphy has halted Stage 2 of the state’s gradual reopening after months of lockdown restrictions. And the state now requires that people wear masks outdoors in public when they cannot practice social distancing.
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Brent johnson can be reached in [email protected].
