New York quarantine order includes travelers from Nevada

Nevada residents traveling to New York, New Jersey or Connecticut will be told to voluntarily quarantine for 14 days after they arrive.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced Tuesday that eight additional states, including Nevada, meet the metrics to qualify for a travel advisory requesting individuals to quarantine. The three Northeast states previously had requested travelers from eight other states to quarantine.

Under the travel advisory, individuals traveling to New York, New Jersey and Connecticut from states with increasing rates of COVID-19, including residents returning from vacations, are asked to self-quarantine. This includes travel by train, bus, car, plane and any other method of transportation, officials said.

“As an increasing number of states around the country fight significant community spread, New York is taking action to maintain the precarious safety of its phased, data-driven reopening,” Cuomo said.

“We’ve set metrics for community spread just as we’ve set metrics for everything the state does to fight COVID-19, and eight more states have reached the level of spread required to qualify for New York’s travel advisory, meaning we will now require individuals traveling to New York from those states to quarantine for 14 days.”

The other states added Tuesday were California, Georgia, Iowa, Idaho, Louisiana, Mississippi and Tennessee. The original list announced last week consisted of Alabama, Arkansas, Arizona, Florida, North Carolina, South Carolina, Texas and Utah.

“This decision by New York further illustrates the significance of our Vegas Smart efforts and strong support for mandatory masks and other precautions our state is taking,” said Lori Nelson-Kraft, senior vice president of communications and government relations for Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority. “With all that New York has been through in managing COVID-19, we certainly understand their extra precautions.”

The 14-day quarantine travel advisory applies to travel from states with a positive coronavirus test rate higher than 10 per 100,000 residents over a seven-day rolling average or a state with a 10 percent or higher positivity rate over a seven-day rolling average.

Nevada’s cumulative positive test rate was at 5.8 percent at the start of June and dipped to 5.2 percent by mid-month but now stands at 6.7 percent. The seven-day rolling average rate, as low as 5 percent this month, stands at 16 percent for the past seven days.

The travel advisory does not apply to any individual passing through designated states for a limited duration, including stopping at rest stops during a vehicular trip or layovers for air, bus or train travel.

Individuals from impacted states who are traveling to the three Northeast states for business are exempt.

The self-quarantine is voluntary, but compliance is expected, officials said.

On ABC’s “Good Morning America” last week, Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont said the state is stopping short of imposing fines for violations, but will ramp up penalties if necessary.

“We’re going to go to all the hotels, every single site there, let people know from those states you have to quarantine if you come to Connecticut,” Lamont said.

In New York, on the other hand, failure to quarantine could result in $1,000 fines, Cuomo said last week.

“It’s only for the simple reason that we worked very hard to get the viral transmission rate down,” Cuomo said. “We don’t want to see it go up because a lot of people come into this region and they could literally bring the infection with them. It wouldn’t be malicious or malevolent, but it would still be real.”

Contact Marvin Clemons at mclemons@reviewjournal.com or 702-863-4285. Review-Journal staff writers Bill Dentzer and Mick Akers contributed to this report.