Florida will have “significant fatalities for many weeks” as the state faces a complete resurgence of the deadly coronavirus, the White House Coronavirus Task Force’s latest report warned.
The January 10 report, released to the Tampa Bay Times on Friday, he said that the rapid growth in the number of cases is stressing hospital staff. He continued to place Florida in the red zone for its number of new cases and said 11 percent of state hospitals are reporting staff shortages, a slight increase from the previous week.
The White House Coronavirus Task Force, led by Vice President Mike Pence, produces weekly reports for each state. The reports often urge Florida and other states to take steps to mitigate the spread of the virus, including limiting capacity in bars and restaurants and implementing policies for face masks.
The January 10 report points to the emergence of a potentially more contagious strain of the virus as a reason for Florida to take strict measures to prevent the spread of the infection.
“Aggressive mitigation should be used to match a more aggressive virus,” recommended the report, adding that “without a uniform implementation of effective facial masking … and strict physical distance, epidemics can get worse quickly.”
He said Florida “must increase public mitigation across the state and local” and increase communication about the importance of things like avoiding family reunions. He recommended that all K-12 teachers and older students, as well as those at colleges and universities, should have weekly tests. Florida did not demand or ask for anything like that.
The report also pushed for efforts to vaccinate people quickly. As of Friday, nearly 850,000 people in Florida had received at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine. The percentage of Florida residents with at least partial vaccination was slightly higher than the U.S. average, according to data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
More than 1.5 million Floridians tested positive for coronavirus in general, and more than 24,000 died.
Governor Ron DeSantis has long opposed a statewide mask mandate and, in recent weeks, has focused his public comments on the coronavirus on vaccine launches, rather than wearing a mask or other mitigation efforts.
The Florida Department of Health’s Twitter account, which used to post regular reminders about coronavirus precautions, such as wearing a mask, hand washing, social detachment, and protecting the elderly and vulnerable, largely interrupted these Twitter messages a few years ago. months. The Twitter account for the past few days has been devoted almost entirely to sharing information about where to get vaccines and retweeting videos from DeSantis’ press conferences.
DeSantis had previously called some of the task force’s recommendations “problematic.” His office had previously failed to provide weekly reports from the White House to the public in a timely manner, which led to Orlando Sentinel to file a lawsuit in December, claiming that the state was violating the Public Records Act.
The state settled the case earlier this month, agreeing to provide the reports on request within two business days and pay $ 7,500 in attorney fees.
In December, the federal task force said it would only provide reports to states if states requested it. So far, Florida, through its health department, has continued to request them, although some other states have stopped doing so.
Florida reports are now provided upon request to the public by the health department, not the governor’s office.
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