A Florida couple in Key West who tested positive for the coronavirus were arrested for defying a quarantine order, local officials said Thursday.
Neighbors videotaped José Antonio Freire Interian and Yohana Anahi González in breach of the requirement and then turned over the revealing tape to Key West police, authorities said.
“There were complaints from the neighborhood that they were still outside, performing normal life functions,” Key West city manager Greg Veliz told The Miami Herald. “An officer brought the video to the judge and the judge signed the order.”
Interian, 24, and Gonzalez, 27, appear to be among the first people to be jailed in Florida for breaking the quarantine.
“To the best of my knowledge, these are the first such arrests in Monroe County,” Brandie Peretz, spokeswoman for the Florida Department of Health in Monroe County, told NBC News.
The news of his arrest came when the state reported a record 253 new coronavirus deaths Thursday, according to the latest NBC News count of coronavirus cases and deaths.
The new number came immediately after Florida health officials reported 216 deaths Wednesday and 186 deaths Tuesday, which were new daily highs in a pandemic that has hit the state especially in recent months.
So far, Florida has recorded a total of 456,105 cases and 6,586 deaths, according to state statistics.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, a staunch ally of President Donald Trump, has come under fire for his handling of the coronavirus crisis and stoked more anger earlier this month by referring to the increasing numbers of cases as a “mistake” .
Nationwide, the death toll from a pandemic that Trump claimed would “just go away” rose overnight to 152,717, NBC News figures show.
Interian and Gonzalez, who were ordered to quarantine after testing positive on July 21, were detained Wednesday night, Adam Linhardt, a spokesman for the Monroe County Sheriff’s Office, told NBC News. They were sent to the Stock Island Detention Center where they were placed in “negative pressure rooms” where air is not recirculated to other parts of the jail.
“The idea is to keep them separate from the general population and keep them in a place where they can’t infect anyone else,” said Linhardt. “We have had people in those rooms before we suspected they did. If they show symptoms, that’s where people are quarantined. “
Each was charged with misdemeanor crimes of violating state law requiring isolation or quarantine in a public health emergency and violating emergency management.
Conviction on those charges could result in up to 60 days behind bars.
Interian issued a bond and was released early Thursday while Gonzalez remains behind bars, Linhardt said.
In other developments related to the coronavirus:
- Former Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain died at age 74 of complications from COVID-19. Cain had tested positive a week after attending the Trump campaign rally on June 20 in Tulsa, Oklahoma. While it was not immediately clear where he contracted the deadly virus, Cain had defended the event, writing in an op-ed: “The media worked very hard to scare people away from attending the Trump campaign rally on Saturday. at night in Tulsa. ” Cain was also photographed without wearing a mask at the rally. Several Trump campaign employees and others also tested positive for COVID-19 after the demonstration.
- Unemployment claims rose for the second week in a row, while GDP fell a record 33 percent as the thriving economy Trump inherited from his predecessor continued to be hit by the pandemic. According to the Labor Department, more than 1.43 million people applied for unemployment benefits for the first time last week. It was the second week in a row that the number increased, and the nineteenth week in a row that the United States had seen more than a million claims.
