Delaware, Kansas and Oklahoma Added to New York’s Coronavirus List of Must-Quarantine States

Three more states were added Wednesday to New York’s growing black list of places from which visitors must quarantine to guard against coronavirus.

Delaware, Kansas and Oklahoma have now been included on the list that includes 19 hard-hit states like California, Texas, Arizona and Florida.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo stressed that states are being added based on metrics suggesting that there is a significant spread of the COVID-19 virus.

“New York is taking action to ensure the continued safety of our phased re-opening,” Gov. Cuomo said in a statement. “Our entire response to this pandemic has been by the numbers, and we’ve set metrics for community spread just as we set metrics for everything.”

Anyone arriving from the states on the list is required to self-quarantine for 14 days, a rule that also applies to New Yorkers returning from visits to the states.

States are added to the list if they have more than 10 people infected with coronavirus per 100,000 residents, or a 10% positive test rate. Both benchmarks are computed on a seven-day rolling average.

Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden has been mostly running his campaign from his home in Wilmington, Delaware, and has only occasionally left the state since the pandemic exploded in March.

The former vice president would apparently now be subject to New York’s rule if he tried to enter the Empire State at any time until the pandemic eases in his home state.

President Donald Trump has brushed aside similar coronavirus restrictions, saying they don’t apply to him.

The pandemic remains somewhat under control for now in New York, which registered a positive test rate of 1.04% in the past day, Cuomo announced.

There were 834 people hospitalized with coronavirus, a slight uptick from the previous day. Ten people died.

With the pandemic spreading widely in other parts of the country, Cuomo and public health experts fear it is only a matter of time before COVID-19 rebounds in the Empire State.