“We couldn’t act,” he said.
The socialization that followed Florida’s rapid economic reopening has left the state reeling from the virus. The Health Department reported more than 11,400 infections on Saturday, a record. Florida cases accounted for 20 percent of all United States cases on Thursday. Covid-19 patients have begun to fill Florida hospital wards, forcing some hospitals to scrap elective surgeries, as they did early in the pandemic. More than 3,600 people have died, including an 11-year-old boy.
Desperate local officials adopted the local mask requirements and closed the beaches over the long vacation weekend. Some communities were deploying door-to-door teams in the hardest-hit neighborhoods, distributing masks, hand sanitizers, and flyers with information on symptoms and tests for the coronavirus.
Governor Ron DeSantis, a Republican, insisted that there would be no new closure, but there is still a gradual rollback: the state has banned drinking in bars. Miami-Dade County ordered entertainment venues to close again and imposed a curfew
“If everyone enjoys life but they do it responsibly, we’ll be fine,” DeSantis said Thursday in Tampa after a visit from Vice President Mike Pence.
The Florida Department of Health has around 1,600 students, epidemiologists, and other staff who track contacts, and has hired a contractor to attract 600 more people, for a total of 2,200. That’s about a third of the approximately 6,400 tracers that will be needed to meet the target of 30 tracers per 100,000 people recommended by the National Association of County and City Health Officials.
With so much community outreach, trying to trace the contacts of each positive case becomes unrealistic, several public health officials said.
“We may have to change tracking priorities as the numbers continue to rise, because at some point it is like drinking from a fire hose,” said Dr. Raúl Pino, an official with the Orlando health department.
