New York state Gov. Andrew Cuomo speaks at a news conference on September 08, 2020 in New York City.
Spencer Platt | Getty Images
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo is ending a requirement for travelers from places with a high amount of coronavirus cases to quarantine for two weeks upon arriving in the state.
Instead, Cuomo will require travelers to get tested for Covid-19 before traveling, and again within three days of entering the state, a spokesperson for Cuomo confirmed to CNBC on Saturday. New York residents returning from travel under 24 hours outside the state do not need to take a test before coming back. However, they must take a test after returning.
Cuomo’s travel advisory applied to anyone arriving from a state that has a positive test rate higher than 10 per 100,000 residents over a seven-day rolling average or a state with a 10% or higher positive rate over a seven-day rolling average. As of Tuesday, 41 states met the criteria to quarantine for two weeks upon arrival, according to New York State’s website.
Last week, Cuomo said the coronavirus outbreaks sweeping the United States ahead of the holiday season have grown so severe that even neighboring states Connecticut and New Jersey, which were able to suppress the virus after spring peaks, were reporting spikes that would land them on the list. In recent weeks, New York has been responding to its own increase in coronavirus cases in “red zones” that have reported higher positivity rates.
Public health officials and infectious disease experts fear the coronavirus surge could become dire as the nation enters its flu season and hospitals begin to fill up. The U.S. continued to set new highs for infections this week, with Friday marking a record 99,321 daily new cases, bringing the seven-day average of daily new cases to a new high at 78,738, a CNBC analysis of data from Johns Hopkins University showed.
—CNBC’s Noah Higgins-Dunn contributed to this report.