TRENTON, NJ – Today, Governor Phil Murphy, along with “assistant” Governor Andrew Cuomo just announced a mandatory 14-day quarantine for all travelers coming into New Jersey from states with spiking COVID-19 numbers. We don’t want to be the first ones to say it, but this smells like retaliation by Murphy and Cuomo for earlier travel bans by those states against New Jersey residents…or it could just be science…we’re not sure anymore.
In a joint press conference with Governor Murphy and the governor of some state called Connecticut, Andrew Cuomo announced the travel restrictions.
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“The infection rate formula will be 10 per 100,000 on a seven-day rolling average or 10 percent of the total population positive on a seven-day rolling average. So any state that has an infection rate above that would require a 14-day quarantine.”
“As of today, the states that are above that level are Alabama, Arkansas, Arizona, Florida, North Carolina, South Carolina, Washington, Utah, Texas. That’s as of today. The states themselves can change as the infection rate changes and we will update daily what states are above that infection rate.”
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“We’re announcing today, a joint travel advisory, people coming into New Jersey from a state with a high infection rate must quarantine for 14 days and we have a calibration for that infection rate and any state that goes over that infection rate, that state will be to the quarantine.”
“It’s only for the simple reason that we worked so hard to get the viral transmission rate go down, we don’t want to see it go up because a lot of people come into this region, and they bring the virus in with them,” Cuomo added.
“What happens in New York, happens in New Jersey and Connecticut,” Cuomo said.
“We live in the densest place in America,” Murphy said. “We have taken our people through hell and back and the last thing we need to do is subject our folks to another round. Doing something common sense as this is.”
Neither Cuomo nor Murphy mentioned anything about incoming visitors being given COVID-19 tests to see if they were infected or not, but we’re also not privy to the science they have at their disposal.
Each state will be responsible for the enforcement of the new policy.
The advisory goes into effect at midnight tonight, but the governors issued no further guidance on that policy or which states they were talking about.
While Murphy and Cuomo gave no indication of which states will be identified, here’s the current trends across America.
The red flag list of states with steadily increasing numbers include Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Kansas, Oregon, Louisiana, Montana, Nevada, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, West Virginia and Wyoming. Those states would most likely be included in the Governor’s initial travel ban.
States to keep an eye on include Connecticut, Indiana, Maine, Mississippi, Ohio, South Dakota, Utah and Washington. Those states have maintained a steady rate of infection with no increase or decrease.
Wait…Connecticut? OK, let’s just wait and see on that one.
The good news for New Jersey really is that we’ve already lost so many people and had so many infections, odds are the numbers here can only go down, especially with the new anti-virus wall going up at midnight. New Jersey is one of 21 states experiencing steady downward trends in virus infections and deaths.
https:// /NYGovCuomo/status/1275814088501637120
