New York, Nov 1 (IANS): New York is planning to carry out a new quarantine policy that features tests both before and after one's arrival in the state, said Governor Andrew Cuomo.
"If you are coming to the State of New York, within three days of arriving in New York, you must have tested negative and have proof of test within three days upon your arrival in New York that says you're negative," he was quoted as saying in a government release on Saturday, Xinhua news agency reported.
"Once you arrive in New York, you must quarantine for three days and then can take a test on the fourth day and if the test on the fourth day says you are negative, then God bless, you're released from quarantine," added the governor.
Cuomo called this a "testing policy," which was made upon the advice of global health experts. "There will be no quarantine list. There will be no metrics. There will be one rule that applies across the country," he said.
The governor didn't elaborate on how to guarantee the policy could be executed as planned.
In the past months, the state's quarantine policy has run like this: individuals who have travelled to New York from areas with significant community spread have to quarantine for 14 days. The quarantine applies to any person arriving from an area with a positive test rate higher than 10 per 100,000 residents over a 7-day rolling average or an area with a 10 per cent or higher positivity rate over a 7-day rolling average.
In Saturday's release Cuomo also said the "the micro-cluster approach (adopted by the state) is working."
"We see that in the numbers. It's also common sense. If you can target where the increase is starting and you can jump on the increase before it spreads, it will make a difference and it is," he added.
New York State's COVID-19 test positivity rate was lately ranked the second lowest in the Unite States, at 1.39 per cent, right after Maine with 0.77 per cent and before New Hampshire with 1.5 per cent, according to the Johns Hopkins University Coronavirus Resource Center (CRC).
As of Saturday afternoon, the Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University reported 33,511 coronavirus deaths so far in New York State, the worst in the country.