Lockdown starting to return
Miami-Dade shuts down restaurants amid surge in cases
South Florida is crawling back into coronavirus lockdown as the virus spreads, with Miami-Dade County shutting down restaurants and gyms beginning Wednesday. And Broward County may not be far behind.
Broward officials met Monday to discuss what businesses could be rolled back and how, Mayor Dale Holness said. A decision could come by Wednesday.
Palm Beach County Mayor
Dave Kerner said no decision had been made in his county, but he said he could not say what might happen in coming days.
Kerner said he will be talking with Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez on Tuesday.
Besides restaurants and gyms, Gimenez’s order closes ballrooms, banquet facilities, party venues and short-term rentals. Restaurants can open for takeout and delivery only.
Offices, stores and grooming services can remain open, and condo and hotel pools, summer camps and day care centers can open with “strict capacity limits,” mask requirements and social distancing.
Although beaches are scheduled to reopen Tuesday after a holiday shutdown, Gimenez warned that he will close them, too, if people don’t follow safety guidelines.
A countywide curfew is in effect from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m., excluding essential workers and people with religious obligations.
Gimenez said the aggressive moves are necessary to curb the spread of the virus and to ensure that hospitals will have enough capacity and staff to treat the rising number of patients. The three South Florida counties, MiamiDade, Broward and Palm Beach, reported 3,004 new cases in the last day.
Gimenez said he was particularly concerned about the rising number of cases among 18- to 34-year-olds — a group that is not always taking proper precautions, he said.
“Contributing to the [spread] in that age group, the doctors have told me, were graduation parties, gatherings at restaurants that turned into packed parties in violation of the rules and street protests where people could not maintain social distancing and where not everyone was wearing facial coverings,” Gimenez said in a statement.
In Broward, Holness said any shutdown order might differ from Miami-Dade’s. But he said more than 50% of complaints the county receives on its 311 hotline are about restaurants not following rules.
“Though there is not quite consensus to close the restaurants at this point in time, there was some strong indicators that many of the cities would like to see that happen,” he said.
Since the state started to reopen, the number of people stricken with coronavirus has risen steadily. Local governments have responded by imposing a growing list of restrictions.
Last week, some South Florida hospitals announced plans to again scale back elective procedures to make room for more COVID-19 patients.
Nearly two weeks ago, Palm Beach county commissioners voted to require that people wear face masks in public. And some restaurants began to close of their own accord, despite Gov. Ron DeSantis saying he would not shut down the economy statewide.
DeSantis did close bars statewide, although they had never reopened in South Florida.