Hawaii, South Dakota and Virgin Islands added to New York's travel quarantine list

Hawaii and South Dakota, along with the Virgin Islands, were added to the list of states and territories from which travelers to New York must self-quarantine for 14 days upon arrival, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo said Tuesday.

The states of Alaska, New Mexico, Ohio and Rhode Island were dropped from the list as their levels of coronavirus infection declined, the governor said.

The quarantine applies to any person arriving from a state and specified territories with a positive test rate higher than 10 per 100,000 residents over a seven-day rolling average, or with a 10% or higher positivity rate over a seven-day rolling average.

"New York went from one of the worst situations in the country to an example for the rest of the nation to follow," Cuomo said in a statement.

"Our numbers continue to remain low and steady, which shows this virus will respond to an approach based on science, not politics. In order to protect this progress, we must keep up our efforts — we cannot go back to the hell we experienced a few months ago," he added.

The list now includes 31 states as well as the U.S. territories of the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico.

The state police and Liquor Authority continued their push against businesses deemed in violation of social distancing and other restrictions due to the pandemic, suspending over the last week 38 additional liquor licenses, largely in New York City,  the state said.

States/regions in red are included on New York's travel advisory list as of Oct. 27, 2020. Guam and Puerto Rico, not pictured, are also on the list.

One establishment in Freeport, Elliot's, was penalized after multiple patrons were observed "walking around and drinking at an outside bar, kitchen staff without facial coverings, and management serving patrons alcohol without food." Investigators returned two hours after issuing violations and found "approximately 100 patrons crammed into the location," requiring a call to the Freeport Police, the state said.

New York continued to make good progress in the battle to control the coronavirus. The statewide level of confirmed positives for COVID-19 was 0.86% in results from Monday, according to state data released Tuesday. Of 77,059 test results, 667 were positive.

The number of new confirmed positive cases was 34 in Nassau County, 49 in Suffolk County and 274 in New York City. Long Island's percent of new cases of those tested Monday was 0.8%, the state said.

Six people died of coronavirus-related causes in the state on Monday. The number of patients in ICU with the virus dropped to 120, the lowest figure since March 15.

Suffolk County Executive Steve Bellone called Tuesday on the federal government to provide more aid to local governments. In doing so, he joins a choir of other government officials from counties, cities and states pleading for assistance from Washington, D.C., after the coronavirus crisis tore holes in their budgets.

“If the federal government, if Washington, fails to provide the appropriate and justified level of federal disaster assistance, in effect, what they are saying is we are OK with defunding local government," Bellone said Tuesday. "We're OK with defunding public safety. We're OK with defunding public health, because as my colleagues know, that is what we do.”

NYC: How many will return to school?

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio on Tuesday defended his Department of Education’s assumption that families who did not complete questionnaires — asking whether they’ll opt their children out of any in-person attendance at the public schools — will be sending their children back to school.

“’I’m saying this, not just as mayor, but as someone who was a public school parent for many years: If you're offered an opportunity to opt out, parents get the word in so many ways,” de Blasio said. “I assure you, this is the most important thing in their lives. Their kids, they're offered the opportunity to opt out. They don't take it. That's a conscious act for the overwhelming majority of parents has been talked about a lot, for months and months.”

On Monday, de Blasio announced that about 700,000 out of the city’s 1.1 million students would attend in person — a few days a week and remotely the others, due to space constraints. But surveys were submitted for only about 400,000 students, the majority of which indicated a preference for remote only learning, about 264,000. Some 130,000 opted for the in-person hybrid.

Students’ families can choose for them to go remote-only at any time.

“I think there is a misunderstanding about how deeply parents get that their kids need to be an in-person learning for every reason, the support they get from educators, the ability to keep moving their education forward in a way you can't do remotely, the physical, mental health care available in schools, the food, the social support, the mentoring. There's just so many reasons. Parents understand that,” he said.

On Monday, Cuomo criticized more than 100 public school districts, including some on Long Island that have not handed in to the state their plans for reopening this fall. If they do not do so by Friday, he said, they will not be permitted to open in September.

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