Cuomo asks DHS to call for COVID-19 assessments for worldwide airline travellers
Wed, Jan 6th 2021 05:10 pm
Gov. Andrew Cuomo on Wednesday issued a letter to U.S. Office of Homeland Protection Acting Secretary Chad Wolf asking him to call for that airline tourists to the U.S. obtain a unfavorable COVID-19 test consequence before getting authorized into the country.
Around 120 nations have to have passengers existing a destructive examination final result prior to boarding international flights. Amongst 70,000 and 80,000 global passengers arrive at John F. Kennedy Worldwide Airport in New York Town every single week. The federal governing administration now needs tourists from the U.K. to obtain a unfavorable examination end result, but the U.K. variant of COVID-19 has distribute to far more than 30 other international locations.
The whole text of the letter is down below:
January 6, 2021
Dear Acting Secretary Wolf:
I publish to you with an urgent plea. I question that you instantly take motion with the CDC and HHS to call for a detrimental PCR check within 72 hrs of departure for all passengers arriving from worldwide places.
There are now 70-80,000 passengers arriving at JFK from outside of the United States every single week. I have for months deployed as many as 100 staff to meet up with domestic flights, and implement our domestic travel quarantine, but do not have access to arrivals of worldwide flights. People parts of the airport are below the sole federal manage of Customs and Border Protection and the CDC. At the time an specific is currently on U.S. soil, I feel it is also late in any case.
A lot of other nations acted aggressively in November or December to both ground flights completely, or to fulfill flights to enforce demanding quarantines and screening requirements. Some 120 countries need that each individual passenger present a detrimental test outcome prior to boarding, and dozens much more restrict all journey totally. On December 25, you belatedly expected a adverse exam result from tourists returning from the U.K. only. But the U.K. variant, “B.1.1.7” which has so much been approximated at anyplace from 50-70% more transmissible, has now been observed in much more than 30 other nations. This pressure is so virulent it went from getting simply a quarter of all U.K. circumstances in November to more than two-thirds in just just one month. A South African and now Nigerian pressure have also been identified, both of those displaying evidence of increased transmissibility.
Even though we do not but know if there is any effect on the ability of these variants to outsmart the vaccines we so urgently formulated, we can only hope that we stop it just before it surges our caseload outside of the potential of the U.S. wellness care program.
The only way to take care of this is to handle this at the source – prevent any passenger who is good from obtaining on the airplane. We saw from our individual genetic tests that the virus that arrived in New York arrived here from Europe, not China. It was our failure to manage the airports that brought this virus to us. We have now witnessed that the action taken on Christmas was as well late to prevent the U.K. strain from producing its way to New York and other states, and has been circulating.
We can still master our miscalculation from very last spring, we can do what ought to be carried out – get all airlines flying into the U.S. from international areas to need a destructive COVID-19 exam. It is not sufficient to merely address the U.K. that ship has sailed. We can, even so, avert the upcoming mutation by adhering to the science.
I am inclined to guide in any way I can, but only Customs and Border Security can truly secure us from this future risk.
Sincerely,
Governor Andrew M. Cuomo
cc:
Secretary Azar, Health and Human Services
Dr. Redfield, CDC