‘I’m mad as hell again’
New Jersey has gone back and forth about whether people traveling to the Garden State from Delaware must quarantine for 14 days. That requirement of Delaware travelers was reinstated on Tuesday, much to the disappointment of Delaware Gov. John Carney.
“We’re back on and I’m mad as hell again,” Carney said in his weekly coronavirus briefing Wednesday afternoon. “That just doesn’t make any sense.”
Carney says he’s made his case to Gov. Phil Murphy but hasn’t been able to get through. “We have asked, time and again, for the formula used to keep us off the list,” Carney said. “All our criteria are better. Hospitalizations? I’d like to compare our hospitalizations to theirs.”
Just 32 Delawareans are being treated in the hospital for the virus, while New Jersey’s hospitals have 471 coronavirus patients. That translates to about 5.3 people hospitalized per 100,000 residents in New Jersey, while Delaware has just 3.7 people hospitalized per 100,000.
“I’m going to continue my intervention there, trying to get the attention, and we need to just keep getting better,” Carney said.
In addition to hospitalizations, Delaware also has been focused on lowering the number of new cases per 100,000 residents. That number is 50.8 for the past week. State leaders would like to see that number under 10.
Another important category is the percentage of people who test positive. For the past week, 4% of people tested come back positive for the virus. That’s getting closer to the target rate of less than 3%.
The only category that is actually where the state wants to be is the average daily hospitalizations, which is within the target rate of less than 10 per 100,000.
If two out of three of those statistics meet the state’s target, Delaware schools would be able to fully re-open for in-person instruction.