Inslee: Travelers from Washington will not be required to quarantine when visiting NY, NJ, CT

OLYMPIA, Wash. — Gov. Jay Inslee began his news conference Wednesday by announcing that Washington state was erroneously included in a list of states in which New York, New Jersey and Connecticut would require travelers to quarantine.

“We’ve been told to expect that to be corrected shortly,” Inslee said.

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Earlier Wednesday, the governors of the states asked for travelers from states with high coronavirus infection rates to go into quarantine for 14 days in a bid to preserve hard-fought gains as caseloads rise elsewhere in the country.

“We now have to make sure the rates continue to drop,” New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Wednesday at a briefing in New York City, joined via video by Govs. Phil Murphy of New Jersey and Ned Lamont of Connecticut, both fellow Democrats. “We also have to make sure the virus doesn’t come on a plane again.”

What was presented as a “travel advisory” that starts Thursday affects three adjacent northeastern states that managed to check the spread of the virus this spring as New York City became a hot spot for the pandemic.

The quarantine applies to people coming from states with a positive test rate higher than 10 per 100,000 residents on a seven-day average or with a 10% or higher positivity rate over seven days.

The states originally announced over the threshold were Alabama, Arkansas, Arizona, Florida, North Carolina, South Carolina, Washington, Utah and Texas, Cuomo said.

Information from the Associated Press is included in this report.

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