Mayor Muriel Bowser (D) issued a Mayor’s Order on Monday, July 27. The order names 27 ‘high-risk states’ and requires residents to self-quarantine for 14 days after non-essential travel to any on the list.
First announced at her Friday, July 24 situational update, the order goes into effect Monday, July 27. The list (below) includes locations where the seven-day moving average of daily new COVID-19 cases is ten or more more per 100,000 people.
The order is effective until October 9, although Bowser said it could be “dialed back” based on COVID-19 trends. This particular list of states is in effect until Monday, August 10, when an updated list will be posted on coronavirus.dc.gov.
Travel to and from Maryland and Virginia is exempt from the Order.
The order comes as the District experiences an apparent uptick in community spread. DC Health announced they will pause the community spread count temporarily to increase the lag time in data reporting to four days to account for the slow return of test results.
“The community spread chart is subject to fluctuation because the data is based on symptom onset date,” said the Mayor’s office in a press release. “As national demand for testing increases and results take longer to come back in DC and across the country, DC Health has identified a need to increase the reporting lag time by four days to reduce volatility in the data.”
While acknowledging the difficulty given the large number of commuters coming from those states, Councilmember Elissa Silverman (I) said the exclusion was ‘troubling’ given areas with high levels of COVID-19 transmission. “It seems we could have specified cities in MD and VA identified as hotspots to get at Ocean City,” she wrote in a tweet.
Thank you @MayorBowser for taking my recommendation on this seriously. I pushed for this on a call w Bowser administration Wednesday. I am glad to see it implemented today. It is troubling, however, that travel to places like Ocean City, MD, clearly now a hotspot, are exempted. pic.twitter.com/Abh5QRP5JJ
— Elissa Silverman (@tweetelissa) July 24, 2020
High-risk states that require 14 days of self-quarantine:
- Arkansas
- Arizona
- Alabama
- California
- Delaware
- Florida
- Georgia
- Idaho
- Iowa
- Kansas
- Louisiana
- Mississippi
- Missouri
- Montana
- Nebraska
- Nevada
- New Mexico
- North Carolina
- North Dakota
- Ohio
- Oklahoma
- South Carolina
- Tennessee
- Texas
- Utah
- Washington
- Wisconsin
As of July 26, DC reported 78 new positive cases of COVID-19, and one death. There have been 11,858 total positive cases of COVID-19 and 582 District residents have lost their lives due to the disease.
Learn more about the Mayor’s Order and see day-by-day data by visiting coronavirus.dc.gov
