By Ilana Siyance
Gov. Andrew Cuomo said it was “reprehensible” and “grossly negligent” to let travelers fly into JFK from the United Kingdom without being tested, due to the threat of a new contagious mutation of the Coronavirus. “Right now, this variant in the UK is getting on a plane and flying to JFK,” Cuomo told reporters in a call on Sunday. London has been shut down again, this time due to a mutation which UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson has warned could be 70 percent more transmittable than the original strain.
“Right now. Today,” the governor urged the feds to immediately enact coronavirus testing for UK travelers, at a “minimum,” if not an outright ban. “Literally six flights a day. And all it takes is one person,” he said, worrying that the new strain can be easily brought to New York on a flight.
As reported by the NY Post, since Johnson’s announcement on Saturday, already countries including France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium, Austria, Ireland and Bulgaria have enacted bans or strict restrictions on UK travelers. Another “120 countries require testing, we don’t. Other European countries have done a ban, we haven’t. And today that variant is getting on a plane and landing at JFK,” Cuomo said of UK travelers.
The governor said that Johnson’s sudden lockdown so close to the holidays is a strong sign of how “apparently dangerous” the new mutation is. “We have about six flights a day coming in from the UK. And we have done absolutely nothing,” said Cuomo. “To me, this is reprehensible, because this is what happened in the spring,” he said.
Gov. Cuomo also announced that New York State now has a positive rate of 5.05 percent, with another 9,957 COVID-19 cases. He said that fear of the new strain “kept me up last night.” But that, “The Port Authority has no authority to ban passengers, health monitor passengers. It’s federal”.
“Doing nothing is negligent. It’s grossly negligent,” Cuomo said. “How many times in life do you have to make the same mistake before you learn?”
Earlier on Sunday, US Assistant Secretary for Health Admiral Brett Giroir had down played the situation, saying we will just “continue to watch” news of the mutation’s spread in the UK. “I don’t think there should be any reason for alarm right now,” Giroir said on ABC’s “This Week.” Giroir added that the new vaccines “should continue to work very robustly against all of these strains.”
