This story was reported by Matthew Chayes, Joan Gralla, Bart Jones, and John Valenti. It was written by Valenti and Jones.
Two schools in the William Floyd School District will be closed Tuesday after a middle school student tested positive for COVID-19, officials said, while a BOCES school in Hicksville will be shuttered until Oct. 5 for in-person instruction.
The BOCES school closed after a staff member there tested positive for the coronavirus. Other cases were reported in Lindenhurst and Riverhead, though those schools did not close.
The closures were among a series of temporary shutdowns of some Long Island classrooms as virus cases emerge through the first few weeks of a return to in-person instruction.
At the state level, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo said five states with high levels of COVID-19 infection were added Tuesday to the list of areas from which travelers must self-quarantine for 14 days after arriving in New York.
Arizona, Minnesota, Nevada, Rhode Island and Wyoming were placed on the state’s “travel advisory” list, bringing to 35 the total number of states and territories subject to the mandate aimed at curbing spread of the coronavirus. No states or territories were removed from the list this week.
New York’s COVID-19 level remained low at 0.89% in results completed Monday, but Cuomo said threats remain to the state’s ability to keep the virus under control.
“For a clear example of the continuing extent of the COVID crisis in America, look no further than New York’s travel advisory list. The virus’ spread across the country — new cases have increased more than 15 percent in the last 10 days — makes it all the more urgent that we stay vigilant here at home,” Cuomo said in a statement.
The 14-day quarantine applies to any person arriving from an area with a positive test rate higher than 10 per 100,000 residents over a 7-day rolling average, or an area with a 10% or higher positivity rate over a 7-day rolling average.
The news came as the United States passed the grim milestone of 200,000 deaths from COVID-19 — by far the highest total of any country in the world, according to Johns Hopkins University, which is tracking cases.
In New York, once the United States’s epicenter of the pandemic, three people died of COVID-19 related causes on Monday, Cuomo said. It was far below the nearly 800 a day who were dying in the state at the pandemic’s peak in April.
Of 83,997 test results reported to New York State on Monday, 754 were confirmed positive for COVID-19. The total number of new cases was 66 in Nassau County, 67 in Suffolk County, and 351 in New York City.
The positive test level was 1.1% on Long Island and 1.0% in New York City.
State Liquor Authority agents and State Troopers inspected 1,023 establishments Monday and issued summonses to three for violating state laws aimed to preventing spread of the virus. All three were in Nassau County, Cuomo said.
Temporary school closings continue
District officials said William Floyd Middle School and Nathaniel Woodhull Elementary School would both be closed and students would move to remote learning Tuesday, the latter “out of an abundance of caution” because a sibling of the middle school student who tested positive…
Read More: Temporary school closings continue; New York adds five states to travel