record-setting number of coronavirus cases in Florida - michael towner

Despite the record-setting number of coronavirus cases in Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis says Florida won’t be rolling back its reopening plan.

The Sunshine State has recorded a growing number of COVID-19 cases throughout June. But as the positivity rate of new cases rises together with daily testing, the Governor is pointing toward migrant farmers and inmates — both groups living in close quarters — as the driving sources of new cases.

That means no mask requirements and no rollbacks, which DeSantis said wouldn’t stop the number of cases in those isolated groups and would outweigh the benefit reopening has done for Floridians.

“We’re not shutting down. We’re going to go forward,” he said. Counties with high or an increasing number of cases are often linked to agriculture or correctional facilities, he said, where the younger demographics frequently don’t show symptoms. One watermelon farm he highlighted in Alachua County had a 90% positivity rate among 100 people tested.

With migrant farmers and incarcerated Floridians spending less time interacting with the broader public, he suggested those cases shouldn’t factor into a statewide lockdown.

“They go to work in a school bus, and they’re all just packed there like sardines, going across Palm Beach County,” DeSantis said. “Just all these opportunities to have transmission.”

In Tuesday’s daily coronavirus report, state health officials reported a record 2,783 newly confirmed cases of the virus, and total diagnoses throughout the pandemic have topped 80,000. But with testing reaching an average of 30,000 people per day, that’s triple the amount of testing conducted during the virus’ April peak, when about 1,300 tested positive. But with 2,783 out of 30,000 testing positive, the rate is certain;y alarming, as it was when 1,300 tested positive in April out of 10,000.