President Trump said he is considering an “enforceable quarantine” in New York, New Jersey and parts of Connecticut and may make a decision as soon as later Saturday, as the nation’s largest city quickly becomes an epicenter of the coronavirus pandemic.
“We might not have to do it, but there’s a possibility that sometime today we’ll do a quarantine,” Mr. Trump told reporters at Joint Base Andrews outside Washington just before he boarded Air Force One for Norfolk, Va., where he plans to see off a Navy hospital ship that is heading to New York. He said the quarantine could last around two weeks.
The president didn’t specify what a quarantine would entail, but said it could include restrictions on travel from New York and New Jersey. New York City alone has more than 23,000 cases, nearly a quarter of all the cases in the country.
The largest number of cases continues to be in the state of New York, where 52,318 people are infected and 728 had died from the virus as of Saturday, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said during a morning briefing.
The Democratic governor said he didn’t speak with Mr. Trump about a quarantine, but rather the pending arrival of the USNS Comfort, the hospital ship.
“I haven’t had those conversations. I don’t even know what that means,” Mr. Cuomo said at a Saturday press briefing. “I don’t know how that could be legally enforceable, and from a medical point of view I don’t know what you would be accomplishing.”
Mr. Cuomo has already ordered all nonessential businesses in the state to close and has said residents should stay home, calling it the “most drastic action we can take” when he announced the measures last week.
Essential services like hospitals, grocery stores and pharmacies remain open under the order, and residents can still go outside for exercise and to obtain groceries.
As the case number in New York rises, concerns have mounted in other parts of the country about people leaving the state and possibly spreading coronavirus. Earlier this week, administration officials urged anyone leaving New York to self-isolate for 14 days.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis issued an executive order on Monday directing travelers from New York, New Jersey and Connecticut to self-isolate for that period, and said violations of the order would amount to a criminal offense. Rhode Island Gov. Gina Raimondo on Thursday issued a similar order. Mr. Trump said on Saturday he had spoken to Mr. DeSantis.
“They’re having problems down in Florida. A lot of New Yorkers going down,” Mr. Trump said.
Mr. Trump, speaking in Norfolk, later Saturday, clarified that any restrictions wouldn’t apply to “people such as truckers from outside the New York area who are making deliveries or simply transiting through.”
He also said the measures wouldn’t affect trade “in any way.”
Standing in front of the Comfort, Mr. Trump said the hospital ship was “stocked to the brim with equipment and medicines and everything you can think of.”
“This great ship behind me is a 70,000-ton message of hope and solidarity to the people of New York,” he said.
Officials in Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island have all postponed balloting from April 28 to June 2. Mr. Cuomo said voting on June 23 would match New York’s previously scheduled primary elections for the U.S. House of Representatives and the state legislature.
Also on Saturday, Mr. Trump approved a disaster declaration for Michigan and Massachusetts as the number of infections globally topped 600,000 and concerns grew about the financial toll.
The two states now have the fifth- and sixth-most infections in the U.S., respectively, according to statistics compiled by Johns Hopkins University. The disaster designation, which was also extended to the island territory of Guam, makes local governments eligible for additional federal funding.
The moves come a day after Mr. Trump signed a $2 trillion stimulus plan, the largest economic relief package in history.
The U.S. added more than 15,000 cases of the Covid-19 disease, pushing the total past 104,000 on Saturday, with a surge of cases in New York amid increased testing.
The growth outstripped that of Italy and China, the countries with the second- and third-most infections, where confirmed cases stayed around 86,000 and 81,000, respectively, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins.
As a result, the number of confirmed infections globally has more than doubled over the past week to more than 600,000. The death toll from the pathogen rose to more than 28,000 on Saturday, with roughly one-third of the fatalities in Italy, data from Johns Hopkins showed.
Spain on Saturday tightened its lockdown measures, requiring all workers in nonessential sectors to stay at home for two weeks starting Monday. Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez said workers would be paid and make up for the lost hours in the future. By Saturday midday, the number of Spaniards who had contracted the virus rose to 72,000, 5,690 of whom had died.
Italy’s death toll from the virus on Friday rose by 919 to 9,134, the highest daily tally on record. Total infections there rose to 86,498, a 7% increase from the previous day.
