Note: The Sunday county case update notes that Teaneck’s count is 16, not 18

Teaneck Mayor Mohammed Hameeduddin has asked the residents of the town to voluntarily self-quarantine themselves in light of the coronavirus pandemic.  The Bergen County town of 40,000 residents has 18 presumptive positive cases of the virus.

Hameeduddin told NBC’s Brian Thompson, who first reported the mayor’s request, that residents ‘should stay home. When I say stay home that doesn’t mean go out to lunch with your friends across the street. That means no play dates, that means your nuclear family stays with your nuclear family. I’m not visiting my sister, I’m not visiting my parents. That is the best way to stop the spread of this’.

The report characterized Teaneck as the ‘epicenter’ of coronavirus in the state; the town has the highest case count in the county and the state. Bergen County has the highest presumptive positive case count of any county in the state, as of Saturday night, at 31 cases, with one fatality.  On Friday evening, County Executive Jim Tedesco held a press conference (details here) and announced a supplemental executive order closing movie theaters, public theaters, and performance halls. Earlier this week, Tedesco declared a state of emergency and ordered schools to close and transition to online learning until further notice.

According to the Bergen Record, on Sunday morning the mayor stressed that ‘we got up to 18 cases and 40 others are now under observation. It’s from a cross section of town, not from any one community’.

As of Saturday afternoon, the Bergen County municipalities with the “presumptive positive” cases are:

Bergenfield: 1

Dumont: 1

Englewood: 3

Fair Lawn: 3

Fort Lee: 1

Garfield: 1

Little Ferry: 1 (Patient Deceased)

Paramus: 1

Teaneck: 18

Wood-Ridge: 1