Governor's office updates list of high-risk states

SANTA FE — The following is a list of states New Mexicans can travel to and from without requiring a COVID-19 quarantine either way, as of Wednesday.

• California.

For the rest of the United States, travelers be aware. Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham’s office updated the high-risk states list Wednesday to add Washington to what is now a list of 43 states, plus Puerto Rico.

Anybody coming from one of the high-risk areas is required to quarantine for 14 days or the duration of their visit to New Mexico, whichever is shorter.

High-risk applies to states or territories with either a 5% COVID-19 test positivity rate or a positive test rate of 80 new daily cases per 100,000 residents, both measured over seven days.

States that are not in the high-risk category include California, Hawaii, Maine, New Hampshire, New York and Vermont. The last five, however, require anybody from New Mexico to quarantine upon arrival in their state.

The quarantine order does not apply to “persons employed by airlines, persons performing public safety or public health functions, military personnel and their dependents, federal employees, persons employed by a federal agency or national defense contractor, emergency first responders and health care workers, persons arriving in the state pursuant to a court order, persons who are employed or contracted by an essential business, as defined in the state’s operative emergency public health order, who are traveling into New Mexico to conduct business activities, New Mexico residents who have left the state for less than 24 hours for matters attendant to parenting responsibilities and New Mexico residents who have left the state to obtain medical care.”