Florida shifts coronavirus containment to outside travelers

Dexter Toledo, 46, of Sarasota, Fla., reads an executive order issued by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis moments after arriving at Tampa International Airport on a JetBlue flight from Newark, N.J., just after midnight, Tuesday, March 24, 2020. DeSantis' executive order, which went into effect at midnight Tuesday, requires anyone arriving on a flight from New York City and New Jersey to self-quarantine for two weeks for prevent the spread of the coronavirus. (Douglas R. Clifford/Tampa Bay Times via AP)

DeSantis said violating the order would constitute a second-degree misdemeanor punishable by 60 days in jail and a $500 fine. He said even though he expected travelers would voluntarily comply with the order, health officials will have their addresses and can check for compliance. The order also asks travelers to report the names of everyone they have had contact with so those people can be notified.

Florida has more than 1,400 confirmed cases of the coronavirus and 20 deaths. About half the state’s cases are in Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties. But testing remains limited and has yet to show any cases of the virus in a third of Florida’s 67 counties. Another third have reported only a few.

The virus causes only minor flu-like symptoms in most people, who recover in a matter of weeks. But it is highly contagious and can cause severe illness or death in some, particularly the elderly and those with underlying health problems. Those with severe cases are often only able to breathe with respirators, stressing the health care system’s capacity to respond.

While moving to stem the possible infection from outside travelers, DeSantis said he wanted to avoid imposing a broad lockdown on the state’s residents as California, New York and others have done. He said he would prefer that restrictive measures be put in place only in the hardest-hit counties.

“It would be a very blunt instrument,” he said. “When you’re ordering people to shelter in place you are consigning a number – probably hundreds of thousands of Floridians to lose their jobs.”

DeSantis pointed to a survey of more than 6,600 businesses showing more than half have laid off more than 40,400 people all together. He also said requests for unemployment benefits have spiked, to 130,000 in four days last week, compared to 28,000 for the entire previous week.

To blunt the impact, the Governor has asked President Donald Trump to declare Florida a disaster area, which would make the state eligible for federal aid. In a letter to Trump released late Monday, DeSantis wrote that Florida’s “hospitals, medical facilities, and first responders are facing challenges rarely experienced before.”

Trump has not yet acted on the request.

DeSantis has ordered such statewide closures as bars and gyms, and limited restaurants to takeout and delivery. State parks have been closed. But in the absence of a statewide stay-at-home order, officials in some of Florida’s harder-hit municipalities have implemented their own. The mandate went into effect Tuesday morning for Miami Beach residents. Other Miami-Dade County municipalities, including Bay Harbor Islands and Bal Harbour Village, issued similar orders Monday night.

Gainesville and surrounding Alachua County, where the 37 confirmed cases include college students returning from Spring Break, also issued “stay at home” orders on Monday. Gainesville is the home of the University of Florida and a community college. All schools in Florida are closed.

“People should only be outside for exercise and attending to their necessities like shopping for groceries or visiting a pharmacy,” Miami Beach Mayor Dan Gelber said in a statement. “It won’t be like this forever, but for now in a community like ours this makes the most sense.”