WASHINGTON — People fleeing New York City amid the coronavirus pandemic have been told to self-quarantine wherever they went for 14 days as White House officials sounded the alarm over the troubling spike in cases in the city.
More than 60 percent of all new coronavirus cases in the US are coming from the New York metro area, which includes Long Island and Westchester, Dr. Deborah Birx said at the White House coronavirus task force briefing on Tuesday evening.
“We remain deeply concerned about New York City,” she said, adding that 31 percent of the people “succumbing” to coronavirus have been in the New York metro area — significantly higher than other regions of the county.
“About 56 percent of all the cases in the United States are coming out of that metro area and 60 percent of all the new cases are coming out of the metro New York area and 31 percent of the people succumbing to this disease,” Birx said.
“To everyone who has left New York over the last few days, because of the rate of the number of cases, you may have been exposed before you left New York,” she said.
Health officials are now calling on anyone leaving the New York metro area to self-quarantine for 14 days in order to stop the spread of the deadly virus.
Birx said a cluster of new COVID-19 cases across Long Island suggested New Yorkers fleeing the Big Apple for their vacation homes were spreading the pandemic.
“That suggests people have left the city, so this will be very critical that those individuals do self-quarantine in their homes over these next 14 days to make sure they don’t pass the virus,” Birx said.
The fresh warning comes after a concerned Gov. Andrew Cuomo on Tuesday morning said the peak of the virus was still 14 to 21 days away in the Empire State.