State health officials reported another 12,478 confirmed cases of COVID-19, Sunday, increasing the statewide total to 350,047 cases.
The Florida Department of Health also reported 87 new coronavirus-related deaths, July 19, bringing the statewide death toll to 4,982 fatalities.
Sunday marked the fifth consecutive day of daily increases of at least 10,000 cases and the 26th consecutive day of at least 5,000 cases reported in a single day.
More than 288,000 cases of the virus, or more than 82% of Florida's total caseload, has come since phase two of Governor Ron DeSantis' reopening plan went into effect June 5.
Of the 3,006,290 tests that have been performed in Florida so far, 11.7% have been positive for the virus. The state's seven-day average positivity rate decreased to 12.72%, Sunday.
State health officials report a total of 20,971 coronavirus-related hospitalizations since the pandemic began.
Here in the Southwest Florida region encompassing Charlotte, Collier, Glades, Hendry, Lee, Manatee and Sarasota Counties, the Department of Health reports a total of 34,407 cases of the virus and 490 deaths.
Tourism is one of Florida’s main economic drivers, and the industry’s hit from COVID-19 shutdowns will be felt for years. That gloomy outlook opened Friday’s meeting of the Florida Economic Estimating Conference at the Capitol.
Members wore masks and sat at socially distant lengths to assess predictions about Florida’s economy. Tourism was a big part of the discussion, with those numbers expected to stay lower than normal through the third quarter of 2020.
“You have to remember that embedded in the second quarter was an overall global shutdown,” says the state’s chief economist Amy Baker, who leads the Office of Economic and Demographic Research. “So that period is setting us up to be different in this quarter relative to that quarter” in the midst of reopening.
Optimistic predictions are that a tourism turnaround could begin in the last quarter of the calendar year – if there’s a COVID-19 vaccine or the spread of the coronavirus otherwise slows. But even with increased tourist numbers following the current downturn, the forecast expects overall travel to be “constrained” for possibly the next two years.
“I think it’s still going to be horrific if you lose 35 percent of the tourists you were expecting next year,” Baker said. “I mean that’s still, that’s mind-boggling in and of itself.”
The tourists that do come to Florida may find fewer options for shopping, dining, and entertainment. Baker said not all businesses can reopen at 50 percent capacity and “modify their behavior accordingly.” She said there are “go” or “no go” decision points businesses have to make based on covering their costs.
“Kool Beanz here in Tallahassee, classic example,” Baker said, referring to a popular restaurant about a mile from the Capitol. “They decided not to reopen in the short run because they can’t handle - in terms of their cost structure - a reduced level of people, and probably safety reasons and a hundred other reasons, but that’s part of it.”
For this year, the group now estimates that just 65 percent of the anticipated visitors to Florida will show up. Many of them will drive, while international travel will plummet.
“What I think about is, you know, if I’m coming from Germany and I want to take a vacation, am I going to come to Florida right now?” Baker asked when considering a traveler’s fear of getting sick and being quarantined away from home. “I don’t think I would.”
Florida’s unemployment rate dropped to 10.4% in June, as the state started the second phase of its economic-recovery effort amid the coronavirus pandemic.
According to numbers released Friday by the Florida Department of Economic Opportunity, the jobless rate was down from an adjusted rate of 13.7% in May.
The latest numbers indicate just over one million Floridians were out of work in June, marking a decrease of 298,000 people from May.
The tourism and hospitality industries remain the hardest hit, even as major theme parks have started to reopen. However, any optimism with the decline is tempered, as the numbers do not reflect the reclosing of bars at the end of June.
Adrienne Johnston is the state’s chief economist.
“As conditions continue to change, as businesses respond to the pandemic and the longer it continues, certainly businesses will be impacted,” said Florida chief economist Adrienne Johnston.
“But, it’s still too early to tell exactly how long it’s going to last and what those long-term impacts are going to be on the labor market.”
The release came a day after the U.S. Department of Labor estimated that first-time jobless claims in Florida nearly doubled last week as the state deals with a surge in coronavirus cases.
Osceola and Orange counties in Central Florida, which depend heavily upon tourism, had the highest unemployment rates in the state. At the other end, the lowest unemployment numbers were found in rural north Florida, in Lafayette and Union counties.
Bars and nightclubs in Florida will continue to be closed for the time being, according to the head of Florida’s business regulation agency. Establishments with more than 50% of sales coming from alcohol were forced to close for onsite consumption three weeks ago, as COVID-19 cases started to spike. Since then, numbers have continued to grow.
The Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulation has performed more than 8,000 inspections, issued 165 non-compliance notices and suspended five licenses.
DBPR Secretary Halsey Beshears said he understands why some bar owners and employees are frustrated, but nothing will change until coronavirus cases start dropping.
“When people congregate in large groups, in close quarters, they drink too much. They tend to get inebriated and their inhibitions are lowered. We know for a fact that when that happens, the virus spreads like wildfire,” said Beshears.
Bars in most of Florida had been allowed to start reopening with limited occupancy June 5, before being shut down again three weeks later.
Many Florida schools are pressing ahead with re-opening plans, and are in close consultation with area health departments. But are those public health officials putting any brakes on reopening, given the rising cases of coronavirus and COVID-19 deaths?
"No, ma'am," said Manatee County Superintendent Cynthia Saunders. "That is not the direction or the conversation that has been had."
Saunders said she is in contact with local health department officials multiple times per day, and that the health department has viewed -- and made suggestions to improve -- Manatee County’s reopening plans.
The plans were made in accordance with the state department of education order that schools reopen brick and mortar buildings next month.
Health department officials “are not going to tell us, 'if you have this number you got to close it down today, if it hits this percent' – I mean that is really not what they do,” said Saunders.
Over the past week, state reports show almost 11 percent of coronavirus tests in Manatee County have come back positive. Statewide over the past two weeks, the positive rate is about 14 percent.
"Public health experts and infectious disease physicians almost universally recommend that children not go to schools until the positive test rate is 3-5% over a two week rolling average," said a letter sent by the Florida chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics to Governor Ron DeSantis last week.
The letter asks DeSantis and Education Commissioner Richard Corcoran to "rethink your order requiring superintendents around the state to open their brick and mortar schools."
The FCAAP represents 2,600 pediatricians in the state.
In an interview with WUSF, Saunders said reopening plans could be in jeopardy if the level of virus in the community isn't lowered.
"Honestly, I think probably the biggest challenge that we're facing as a community is how we are able to come together to figure out how we are going to live with COVID safely in the next year," she said.
"And if we don't come together, with complying with the health recommendations, then it could very well be that we're not going to be able to have school daily, brick-and-mortar, face-to-face."
Saunders said she is working with community leaders, local sheriffs and the county chamber of commerce to come up with a campaign to communicate the need for social distancing and curbing the spread of coronavirus.
"We've got to do something different because obviously nothing's worked until now," she said.
The ongoing coronavirus pandemic has become politically troubling for Governor Ron DeSantis. The AP reports, DeSantis recently released a short campaign-style video on social media showing Florida mayors praising the governor's handling of the outbreak, even as some of those same mayors have also expressed concern about the state's response to the pandemic.
Democrats and even some members of DeSantis' own party have criticized the governor's handing of the pandemic.
Nearly one in three children under 18 have tested positive for COVID-19 with no signs of the virus slowing down in Florida. The current surge in coronavirus cases is putting families in the position of having to decide whether their children will physically return to school next month.
State Health officials report Lee County has the seventh highest positivity rate among kids in the state at 46.3% and Collier County has the 12th highest with a positivity rate of 42.7 percent.
Those rates are well above the statewide positivity rate among children of 31.1 percent.
Southwest Florida-based pediatrician Dr. Dara Crater tells the News-Press that kids who end up needing hospitalization due to COVID-19 tend to have underlying risk factors like asthma or obesity.
She says one bit of hope comes from some early studies in Europe showing that children infected with the virus tend NOT to spread it to others.
