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The novel coronavirus continues to exact a steadily harsher toll in Rhode Island. State officials on Thursday reported the biggest number of day to day deaths (eight), and the number of new cases (277) set a high for the second consecutive day.
There are now 1,727 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the state. The number of hospitalized patients climbed to 160, up from 143 on Wednesday.
Gov. Gina Raimondo announced she has signed an executive order requiring people who have tested positive for coronavirus or who have been diagnosed with it by a doctor to remain in their homes for 14 days. Violators will be subject to fines.
More than 2,000 Rhode Islanders are under quarantine, and the governor said she doesn’t want them to receive fines of hundreds of dollars.
“But we’re also very serious about this,” she said, “and if you are found to be deliberately, knowingly, purposefully, repeatedly violating your quarantine and isolation, well, then you will be punished. This is just as important as any other law. It’s necessary to keep everybody safe and healthy and alive.”
The governor said a 14-day quarantine applies to people who enter the state to stay here, and who have been found by the state Department of Health to have been in close contact with someone who has COVID-19. (There are exceptions for people who work in Massachusetts or who make a cross-border trip for food, for example.)
The state’s stepped-up approach to enforcing quarantines comes as it moves closer to implementing an automated system, being developed with Salesforce.com, for tracing the travel of COVID-19 in Rhode Island.
Raimondo declined to comment on details of the state’s modeling for projected deaths and illnesses, saying she did not want to cause unnecessary panic. She said she expects the peak, roughly, to come between mid-April and late May.
She said the state’s testing capacity has doubled over the last week, with more than 1,800 people getting tested Wednesday.
“Testing is a key component of what’s going to allow us to get back to work,” Raimondo said. The state’s progress on this front, she said, means Rhode Island is getting closer to getting back to some signs of normalcy.
Despite expanded testing, Raimondo said the state still lacks enough “supplies, tests, machines and re-agents” to test people who lack symptoms.
And with the worst of the impact still to come, Raimondo said the state has to be more serious about getting people with the virus or signs of illness to remain in their homes.
“If you are ordered into quarantine, you must obey the quarantine,” she said.
Raimondo said the number of Rhode Islanders in quarantine and in isolation will shoot up, since more people are being tested.
“And in some ways that’s a good thing, it’s a good thing in that we’re getting more accurate information and we know how to deal with it,” the governor said. “It also means this is about to get harder, not easier, and I’m not going to lie about that. More of us are going to be stuck inside for 14 days, and we are going to start enforcing it even more so because it’s the only way we’re going to get to the other side of this crisis.”
