Reopen Connecticut: CT backtracks, will not modify rules of travel advisory list

Tuesday, October 20, 2020

Cuomo urges against non-essential travel to NJ, CT

Marcus Solis has more on the latest update to the Tri-State Travel Advisory as COVID cases rise.

CONNECTICUT (WABC) -- Governor Ned Lamont reversed course Tuesday, saying Connecticut will not modify the rules of its travel advisory, which determines whether or not incoming travelers have to quarantine upon arrival.

The modification had been expected to decrease the number of states on the list.

Currently, a state needed 10 cases per 100,000 or a 10% positivity rate to be included on the list. Lamont had suggested it would be changed to 10 cases per 100,000 and a 5% positivity rate, and a state would have to hit both of the metrics to be put on the travel advisory list.

"The other threshold was so broad that it was including about 85% of our states across the country," Lamont said previously. "It was becoming unenforceable."

Lamont now says New York, New Jersey and Connecticut are keeping the Tri-State Travel Advisory as is, and the three states will not put each other on their own travel advisory. Instead, they will treat themselves as a region and discourage non-essential travel between the three.

"We are going to keep our overall travel advisory in place for all the other states, but for New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, we are going to have a pact where you don't have the travel advisory that impacts the three of us when we travel amongst each other," he said.

Connecticut's positivity rate is currently 3%, which Lamont said is a reflection of increasing numbers of positive results around the region and the country.

Lamont said the state will continue to issue fines for Connecticut residents and out-of-state residents who violate the quarantine and state notification rules. As of last week, the state has issued 45 fines, most to people from Connecticut.

"Obviously at that point, my strong recommendation would be, stay close to home as much as you can," he said. "We've always had an exception for 24 hours, if you have to go into the city for some work-related, essential activity. So there would be ways to work around it. But stay close to home if that happens."

As of Monday, there have been 4,554 COVID-related deaths, 12 more since Friday.

WATCH: Eyewitness to a Pandemic

Jim Dolan begins our story at the end of last year, as hundreds of thousands pack into Times Square to ring in 2020. Unbeknownst to us, a health crisis that would make such a mass gathering illegal and deadly, transform daily life, kill tens of thousands of our neighbors and cripple the economy was already forming in China.