In the Keys, COVID-19 is rising as tourism increases

Three weeks ago, the Florida Keys had an empty feeling.

Shops were shut. Restaurants had a few locals. And two checkpoints blocked tourists from entering the island chain.

The COVID-19 rate also was low. With visitors shut out, Keys leaders hoped the virus would be, too.

Fast-forward to now, and many tourists are back. They’re spreading out on the beaches, filling the restaurants — at least to the new limited capacity — and strolling Duval Street.

The coronavirus numbers are up, too. In the past two weeks, 81 cases have been added to the Keys total. The prior two-week period saw 13 additional cases.

Could the reopening of the island chain be affecting the coronavirus infection rate?

Two weeks ago, the Keys started seeing a spike in coronavirus cases, after months of a new case here and there. The region wasn’t spared deaths, with four since the pandemic started, but the impact was nothing like the rest of

South Florida.

On Friday, the Keys had a record daily high of 15 reported cases to make a total of 202 known cases.

The last record had been 14 in one day, on Thursday. That new total included 94 added cases since the Keys reopened to tourists on June 1.

Before that, it was 108 cases — and that included a cluster of cases from a nursing home in the Upper Keys, where more than 20 residents and staff have tested positive.

Are the visitors causing the uptick in COVID-19 cases?

“Clearly, these people coming down from the mainland; they’re not playing nice,” said County Mayor Heather Carruthers. “This has come pretty fast and furious. It’s overwhelming.”

During the checkpoint days, when cars were stopped coming into the Keys, the other side of U.S. 1 allowed Keys residents to freely drive up to the mainland. Still, the COVID-19 cases did not spike until the southbound lanes reopened to tourists.

Keys leaders expected case totals to rise, but not like this.

“We currently have six hospitalizations,” Carruthers

said Thursday, as she was preparing for phone meetings with other Keys leaders to address the rise of COVID-19 reports. “That’s starting to make me really uncomfortable.”

In the Keys, where tourism pays most of the bills, the reopening of the island chain versus the risk of COVID-19 spread has been a balancing act, she said. The county is doing more outreach to urge people to take precautions.

“Social distance, wash your hands and wear your damn mask,” Carruthers said. “It’s required. Clearly, a lot of people have not been. And stay home if you’re sick. We’ve got to do something. If everybody could stay home and still pay their bills we wouldn’t be so pressured to open up.”

Visitors could be contributing to the rise of the novel coronavirus along the island chain, said Dr. Mary Jo Trepka, an infectious disease epidemiologist at Florida International University.

“There is so much COVID in Miami-Dade County and as they open up to probably a lot of people from the rest of South Florida there is probably more exposure going on in the Keys that wasn’t present when they were completely closed down,”

Trepka said.

Trepka says it takes about two weeks for COVID-19 test results to begin reflecting the effects of looser social distancing regulations such as the reopening of businesses to residents, and in the Keys’ case, the reopening of the island chain to visitors.

Now is the time when those potential cases would start to appear in the county’s test results, she said.

MORE COVID CASES

Florida’s Department of Health has reported more than 50 additional cases in Monroe County over the past two weeks, with the positivity test rate ranging from 0 percent to 12.3 percent.

“The question, of course, is were those people exposed in the Keys or were they exposed in MiamiDade County or elsewhere in South Florida? We don’t know that from the data,” Trepka said. That question could potentially be answered through Monroe County Department of Health’s contact tracing investigations.

The tracers are virus detectives, tracking down newly infected people and those with whom they may have had close contact with in an effort to isolate them and stop the disease from spreading.

The Keys will also likely continue to report additional cases.

Outside of Key West, the most popular tourist destination in the 120-mile island chain, the second highest concentration of cases were in Tavernier, a mostly residential area in the Upper Keys.

PUBLIC HEALTH EXPERT

Bob Eadie, administrator of the Department of Health in Monroe County, said the rise in cases cannot all be blamed on visitors to the Keys.

“If everyone were wearing their masks and keeping social distances and washing their hands they wouldn’t have gotten it either,” Eadie said.

The quantity of cases isn’t surprising, Eadie said.

“We were living in a bubble,” Eadie said. “We were isolated ourselves from a great deal of infection happening in Dade and Broward and Palm Beach county. With our checkpoints, we kept out a lot of people that could have had the disease. It’s finally here.”