Has New York’s quarantine enforcement been stepped up?

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a cartoon of a doctor holding a tablet

Regular readers have probably picked up on my mentions of having no travel plans this year. Knowing that I had a new addition to the family on the way (and with some family members in higher risk groups), I’ve wanted to err on the side of caution when possible. It was just a stroke of luck that I didn’t have any travel plans on the docket this year and didn’t have to make any big cancellations.

In recent months, there is no doubt that my household as a whole has been getting itchy feet to some extent (just going to Cumberland Farms to get Gift of College Gift Cards was a big outing for us). With the holidays approaching, we’re considering how to safely spend time with our families (none of my family has yet had a chance to meet our new son given that we’ve all wanted to reduce his risk). However, we may travel to spend Thanksgiving with my parents, who have been at home apart from necessary trips to the grocery store given their own risk factors. What we haven’t yet determined is how we’ll get there as they live about 14 hours away from us by car. From the outset, we were fairly sure that we would drive. However, a month with a toddler and newborn has had us consider whether a flight may be easier.

Despite the relative ease of a flight by comparison, we came to the conclusion that driving made more sense for us from a number of standpoints. However, one standpoint I hadn’t considered was quarantine enforcement on return.

Becky at Sight Doing reports on her recent return to New York State after having visited a state deemed to be a high risk and frankly enforcement is more intense than I’d have anticipated. To be clear, I support that: we’ve been spending time at home both to minimize risk to our family and in the hopes that we’re doing our part to slow transmission so that we can all get back a sense of normalcy sooner. Regardless, wherever you stand on travel restrictions and quarantine enforcement, I found Becky’s post to be very enlightening in terms of what to expect if returning to New York State by air.

And that’s not to say that we wouldn’t quarantine ourselves at home if we traveled by car. We surely would, though if traveling by car I suppose that we likely will not be subject to reporting our temperatures daily and explaining how we’re acquiring groceries and medicine. It’s not that I’d be afraid that I wouldn’t be able to answer for all of that satisfactorily but rather that I’d rather not deal with the added disruption of daily and random reporting.

Again, as a New York State resident, I found Becky’s post an interesting read as I haven’t had any direct experience with air travel recently and wasn’t aware of how this was being handled. Click here to read about her experience.

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