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Carney 'mad as hell' over Delaware returning to states' travel advisory list


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Gov. John Carney said he is "mad as hell" that Delaware has once again been placed on New York, New Jersey and Connecticut's coronavirus travel advisory.

Carney said Tuesday during his weekly press briefing that adding Delaware to the advisories "doesn't make any sense," the Delaware News Journal, a Paste BN Network member, reported.

This isn't the first time Carney has expressed frustration on Delaware being placed on this advisory, which requires residents to quarantine for 14 days when entering those states. 

After Carney voiced his displeasure last week, New Jersey, New York, Connecticut and Pennsylvania removed Delaware from their quarantine lists. The governor indicated Tuesday that he will once again be talking to the states' governors about this issue. 

These states require:: Travelers to self-quarantine or present negative COVID-19 test

Carney has previously said Delaware is being penalized for its small population and its expansion of testing, particularly in the beach communities. As of July 21, Delaware has confirmed 13, 746 COVID-19 cases and 525 related deaths. 

"As I said to Govs. Cuomo and Murphy last week, we're going to be on and off, unless we stop testing," Carney said. "And we're not going to stop testing." 

According to Connecticut, New Jersey and New York's criteria, the travel advisory applies to anyone coming from a state that has a positive test rate higher than 10 per 100,000 residents or a 10% or higher positivity rate over a 7-day rolling average.

Delaware health officials said Tuesday that the state has a COVID-19 positive rate of 4.2% and 105.3 cases per day, on a five-day average. Carney believes Delaware was re-added to the list because it had two recent days where there were more than 100 daily cases confirmed. 

"That makes no sense," Carney said. "We're better today than when we were first put on the list two weeks ago. And we're better today than we were last week, when we were taken off the list."

"We shouldn't be on the list."

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Follow Meredith Newman on Twitter: @merenewman