Nationally prominent epidemiologist told Ron DeSantis administration statewide lockdown critical

Emergency rooms are filling up, and it’s not just COVID-19. Image via AP.

A scientist delivering projections to the White House about coronavirus infections advised Gov. Ron DeSantis to issue a Florida-wide shutdown.

Ali Mokdad, a University of Washington professor, told the Miami Herald a statewide stay at home order remains imperative. He developed a model at his university’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation that suggests Florida’s hardest days lay ahead.

“These estimations are based on [the expectation that] Florida will implement stay-at-home measures within a week from now,” he said. “We’re assuming next Monday this will be in place.”

The former U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention epidemiologist said if no shutdown happens, “these numbers will go up.”

Yet DeSantis thus far has resisted a blanket order impacting all Floridians. He instead has left such action to local governments for the most part.

On Monday, DeSantis did issue a safer at home order impacting four counties in South Florida, where 3,675 of Florida’s 6,338 total COVID-19 cases have originated. Those numbers reflect cases reported as of Tuesday morning, but numbers are rising by the hundreds daily.

“With this order and what these counties have already done, we’re going guns blazing doing all that we can to slow the spread,” DeSantis said.

With many North Florida counties reporting no cases of coronavirus infections, the Governor has left it to regional leaders to determine appropriate closures and lockdown restrictions.

But the University of Washington model has garnered tremendous attention, including from the White House.

And notably, even though the model assumes DeSantis will eventually cave and issue a statewide shelter order, it predicts that cases will peak in May and overwhelm Florida’s health care infrastructure at that time.

Florida, according to the model, will need about 17,000 hospital beds for COVID-19 patients, including 2.500 ICU beds; it should have more than 20,000 hospital beds available by then, but probably only 1,700 ICU beds.

“Our analysis on COVID-19 predicts demand for hospital services in each state, including the need for ventilators and both general hospital beds and ICU beds. The forecasts show that demand for beds will exceed capacity as early as the 2nd week of April,” Bokdad wrote on Twitter.