Enforcing the quarantine in RI: Raimondo says fines to be issued

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (WJAR) — Quarantining and isolation rules are about to be stricter than ever in Rhode Island.

“We are going to start to get more serious about enforcing the quarantine because it’s necessary to protect everybody,” Gov. Gina Raimondo said Thursday during her daily coronavirus briefing.

With that, the governor announced that she signed a new executive order that will allow authorities to issue fines in “the hundreds of dollars range” to Rhode Islanders who break quarantine orders.

“What does quarantine mean? It means you cannot leave your house. It also means if you are sick, you have to isolate,” Raimondo said, adding that she knows it’s difficult, especially for people who have big families. “You must isolate until you no longer have symptoms.”

While there are currently 2,243 people in quarantine across the Ocean State, Raimondo said that number will go up as testing increases.

“This is about to get harder, not easier,” Raimondo said. “I’m not going to lie about that. More of us are going to be stuck inside for 14 days.”

But she said it’s necessary.

“Even though we’re sick of this and we’re sick of being stuck in our homes, if you are ordered into quarantine, you must obey the quarantine,” Raimondo said.

The governor also announced that there have been eight more coronavirus-related deaths in the state, bringing the total to 43.

Dr. Nicole Alexander-Scott said there have also been 277 new cases and 160 hospitalizations, with 1,727 cases statewide.

She said 45 of the 160 patients in hospital are in the intensive care unit, with 38 of them intubated.

Alexander-Scott also said the latest deaths include a wide variety of ages.

The youngest is a person in his 20s, who she said lived in a group home and had existing issues.

The others, she said, include a person in his 40s, another in his 50, a fourth in his 60s, plus a person in his 70s, another in his 90s, with two people in their 80s.

Among the eight new deaths, the health department said six lived at nursing homes.

That means 28 of the state’s 43 coronavirus deaths have been connected to nursing homes.

“We are being as aggressive as we can in this time to help protect our nursing home residents,” Alexander-Scott said.

While other group living settings are places of concern, the health department said there have been no inmate cases at the ACI.

The governor said she knows people there and their families are worried.

“I hear you,” she said. “I’m aware of it.”

Meanwhile, Raimondo said testing sites across Rhode Island were forced to closed early Thursday due to inclement weather, with many people cancelling their appointments.

Still, she said Rhode Island is now testing 1,800 people a day, also noting that number is twice what Massachusetts and Connecticut are doing per capita.

She said she’s holding off on revealing the state’s prediction model for a surge in coronavirus cases, saying the information isn’t good enough yet, but added that the surge is expected mid-April to mid or late May.

“I don’t want to cause unnecessary panic,” Raimondo said. “Right now, I can tell you we’re going up the curve. There’s going to be a lot more people sick, a lot more people in the hospital.”

(NBC 10’s Brian Crandall contributed to this report.)