Coping with COVID: Kansas travelers on mandatory quarantine list for three states

This week three eastern states in the U.S. have added Kansas to the COVID-19 quarantine list for visitors entering the state, according to reporting by KMBC 9 News.

The new requirement means that Kansans hoping to go to New York, New Jersey or Connecticut must quarantine upon arrival for 14 days, an announcement which came after Kansas showed a continued increase in the number of new coronavirus cases.

Health experts in Kansas say unnecessary mass gathering is what is driving the increase, saying people are too relaxed and gathering too often while not wearing masks, reports KMBC.

“Any time you get this disease, you are rolling the dice,” Dr. Dana Hawkinson, an infectious disease specialist with the University of Kansas Health System, said.

An increase in infection rates have led officials in the three eastern states to require anyone arriving from Kansas to quarantine for two weeks. Offenders in New York face thousands in fines, reports KMBC.

“When you have large numbers of people infected, even those small percentages become very large numbers,” Hawkinson said. “Healthy populations do get ill from this or have continued effects from this for long term.”

Dr. Lee Norman, Secretary of the Kansas Department of Health and Environment, urged people to consider whether summer travel, especially to places like New York with quarantine orders, is worth the risk for Kansans.

“I would recommend that, until we turn the corner on this and get our numbers going back in the more favorable direction, that they should not make that travel,” Norman said, “because they are going to be inconvenienced and run the risk of having a civil penalty against them.”

While flying will allow for better tracking of travelers, driving may be a safer alternative for some hoping to leave the state of Kansas.

Missouri is currently not on those states’ lists of mandatory quarantine.