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Governor to meet with Orthodox Jewish community leaders to address COVID-19 clusters

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Wed, Sep 30th 2020 10:10 am

Colorado added to NYS travel advisory; Arizona and Virginia removed

Gov. Andrew Cuomo on Tuesday announced he will meet with Orthodox Jewish leaders to address COVID-19 clusters in communities downstate. The governor also announced Colorado was added to New York's COVID-19 travel advisory. Arizona and Virginia were removed.

The advisory requires individuals who have traveled to New York from areas with significant community spread 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 seven-day rolling average or an area with a 10% or higher positivity rate over a seven-day rolling average.

The number of new cases, percentage of tests that were positive and other helpful data points are available at forward.ny.gov.

"I'm going to be meeting with religious leaders of the Orthodox community and local officials. If you look at those clusters and you look at those ZIP codes, you will see there's an overlap with large Orthodox Jewish communities. That is a fact. I will be meeting with them to talk about it. This is a public health concern for their community. It's also a public health concern for surrounding communities. I've said from day one, these public health rules apply to every religion, atheists – it just applies to every citizen of the state of New York, period," Cuomo said. "We have seen hotspots before, but this is probably the largest cluster that we have addressed before, and the clusters are Brooklyn, Orange, Rockland. The activity in the cluster is very different than what's going on in the rest of the state. That's actually good news in some ways, because you have effectively identified the genesis of the potential growth of the virus. Once you have the information, you aggressively target these clusters. These are embers that are starting to catch fire in dry grass. Send all the firefighting equipment and personnel to those embers and stamp out the embers right away. That's what this data does. Local governments are the first line of defense and they must respond. Competent government must do compliance and enforcement. A cluster today can be community spread tomorrow."

The full, updated travel advisory list is below:

  1. Alabama
  2. Alaska
  3. Arkansas
  4. Colorado
  5. Delaware
  6. Florida
  7. Georgia
  8. Guam
  9. Idaho
  10. Indiana
  11. Iowa
  12. Kansas
  13. Kentucky
  14. Louisiana
  15. Minnesota
  16. Mississippi
  17. Missouri
  18. Montana
  19. North Dakota
  20. North Carolina
  21. Nebraska
  22. Nevada
  23. Oklahoma
  24. Puerto Rico
  25. Rhode Island
  26. South Carolina
  27. South Dakota
  28. Tennessee
  29. Texas
  30. Utah
  31. Wisconsin
  32. West Virginia
  33. Wyoming

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