South Florida Sun-Sentinel (Sunday)
As cases pile up, DeSantis follows Trump
President Donald Trump delivered his wishes on Twitter in all caps with three exclamation marks — “SCHOOLS MUST REOPEN IN THE FALL!!!”
Just hours later, the Florida Department of Education ordered school districts to prepare for inperson instruction five days a week.
The state’s announcement blindsided Fedrick Ingram, who leads the Florida Education Association. He said his union representing 150,000 school employees had no formal involvement or input into the order.
He doesn’t think it’s a coincidence the order to reopen schools signed on Monday came on the same day as the president’s tweet.
“Our governor has tied himself politically to the president,” Ingram said. “We have seen that time and time again in terms of the policies he has rolled out and how he has handled this pandemic. It is unfortunate in this country we do educational policy by tweet.”
It’s a frequent criticism leveled at Gov. Ron DeSantis as he leads Florida through the coronavirus pandemic: DeSantis is taking his cues from Trump instead of listening to people in his own state.
DeSantis’ deference to Trump hasn’t gone unnoticed by some voters in an election battleground that will play a pivotal role in the outcome of this year’s presidential contest.
influenza outbreak, but it’s been found over and over again, as people have looked at this and studied this, particularly in Europe, that the school children actually aren’t vectors for this,” he said. “For whatever reason, they usually get infected by the parents. They usually aren’t infecting adults. Places that have had schools open have not seen the schools contribute to increasing the prevalence of the virus.”
The state mandate, issued by Education Commissioner Richard Corcoran, leaves the decision to local officials based on their assessment of the health risks.
The governor, whose aggressive push to reopen Florida has proved controversial, also said he wasn’t considering reopening bars, which had been closed again late last month.
“When we were getting reports of packed, party-type situations, and that was not a part of the guidelines,” DeSantis said. “So right now, we’re not making any changes. Status quo. We want to get that positivity rate down.”
The day’s 98 additional deaths included three non-resident deaths, according to the Florida Department of Health, which compiles the statistics.
An initial state summary released Saturday morning listed
188 additional deaths, but that appears to have been a miscalculation.
Neither the daily number of cases nor deaths is a record, but both reflect the worsening trends of the past two weeks. The record for deaths was set Thursday, with
120, and another 93 fatalities were logged Friday.
South Florida
South Florida, which accounts for 29% of Florida’s population, reported 4,716 new cases in the past day, or 46% of the total.
Broward County: 1,548 new coronavirus cases reported Saturday, bringing the total to 28,253. A total of 478 people have died, 18 more since Friday.
Palm Beach County: 614 new cases were reported, bringing the total to 19,847. A total of 608 people have died, eight more since Friday.