New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio announced on Wednesday plans to set up COVID-19 quarantine checkpoints in key areas to better enforce quarantine regulations.
“Travelers… will be given information about the quarantine and will be reminded that it is required, not optional,” said de Blasio at a news briefing. Fines for breaking the quarantine could reach as much as $10,000.
Visitors coming from the states on New York’s travel advisory list are mandated to quarantine for 14-days. The quarantine applies to anyone coming from an area with a COVID-19 positive test rate above 10 per 100,000 people over a 7-day rolling average or an area with a 10 percent or higher positivity rate over a 7-day rolling average.
New York state leaders hope that quarantine regulations will help keep the infection rate low even as the rate rises in much of the rest of the U.S. “Our job is to do everything we can to control COVID and anticipate possible future issues, and in that regard, the issues we watch are the infection rates spreading across the country and compliance with the rules that we now have in place across the state,” New York Governor Andrew Cuomo in a statement.
“The situation across the nation is still very bad and there are more states that have exceeded our thresholds for quarantine.”
“New York State has one of the lowest infection rates in the U.S.,” Governor Cuomo added.
