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Feeling the need to get an authentic New York bagel? Or a slice of authentic New York-style pizza?
You now can — assuming you're comfortable enough getting on a plane in the middle of the COVID-19 outbreak to go and get them.
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo on Tuesday announced that Arizona has been removed from the list of places from which travelers would need to quarantine themselves for 14 days upon arrival. Also dropped from the list are Alaska, Delaware, Maryland and Montana.
The neighboring states of New Jersey and Connecticut, which had been acting in concert, also removed the travel ban.
According to Cuomo's office, the quarantine requirement applies to any person arriving from an area with a positive test rate for COVID-19 higher than 10 per 100,000 residents over a seven-day average, or an area with positive test results for the virus above 10% over that same seven-day period.
The latest figures from the ASU Biodesign Institute show Arizona with a positive test rate of 7.02% for the past seven days.
Governors of the tri-state area imposed the quarantine in June after infection rates in Arizona spiked following the decision of Gov. Doug Ducey to rescind his stay-at-home order and allow most businesses to reopen.
Cuomo, in the original joint announcement with his counterparts, said this wasn't meant to single out any particular state. He said the governors came up with what they consider an infection rate that is unacceptable.
"It's only for the simple reason that we worked very hard to get the viral transmission rate down," he explained. "We don't want to see it go up because a lot of people come into this region and they could literally bring the infection with them."
The process has worked both ways.
In April, Ducey ordered a similar two-week quarantine for visitors to Arizona from areas with what he described as "substantial community spread." Ducey said at the time that move was aimed at the tri-state area because it was, at the time, a COVID-19 hotspot.
That order expired even before the three states imposed their quarantine on Arizona travelers.
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