List: Travelers to New York from all but these 31 countries must quarantine

ByEyewitness News WABC logo

Tuesday, September 29, 2020

Coronavirus symptoms, tips amid outbreakLearn more about coronavirus symptoms and other helpful information during the COVID-19 pandemic.

NEW YORK (WABC) -- Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced that international travelers coming from what are considered Level 2 and 3 countries will have to quarantine and fill out a travel form when they arrive in New York.

Cuomo signed the executive order Monday in response to the CDC's decision to roll back screening measures at airports amid rising COVID-19 cases across the world.

Health officials say the measure is necessary for contact tracing purposes.

"The CDC's decision to end enhanced screening at airports, coupled with alarming case increases in countries around the world, presents an increased threat to New York's progress in the war against COVID-19," Governor Cuomo said. "Today's Executive Order will require the Department of Health to alert all travelers from any Level 2 or Level 3 country of mandatory quarantine requirements, as well as require international travelers to complete the DOH Traveler Health Form to aid in the state's robust contact tracing efforts and further prevent the spread of COVID-19."

The executive order builds on the domestic COVID-19 Travel Advisory already in place for states that have a significant degree of community-wide spread of coronavirus.

The 31 countries not subject to the governor's executive order and mandatory quarantine requirement are listed below:

American Samoa

Anguilla

Bonaire

Brunei

Cambodia

Cayman Islands

Dominica

Falkland Islands

Fiji

Guernsey

Greenland

Grenada

Isle of Man

Laos

Macau SAR

Marshall Islands

Mauritius

Micronesia

Montserrat

New Caledonia

New Zealand

Palau

Saba

Saint Barthelemy

Saint Kitts and Nevis

Saint Lucia

Saint Pierre and Miquelon

Sint Eustatius

Taiwan

Thailand

Timor-Leste

State health officials say 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 percent or higher positivity rate over a 7-day rolling average.

ALSO READ | Exclusive: Tenants living in Manhattan hotel alongside homeless men say they "feel trapped"

Click to watch and hear people living in one NYC hotel describe a nightmare situation since their building became a temporary shelter

WATCH: Eyewitness to a Pandemic

It overwhelmed the health care industry, it put millions out of work, it drowned social services in an ocean of need and threatened the food supply Americans had long since taken for granted. At the apex of the crisis and for the weeks that followed, no part of life, or even what followed life, was spared.