DeSantis mum on Disney opening

Mayor Demings says permission to restart SeaWorld also pending

Orange County Mayor Jerry Demings said Thursday he’s yet to hear from Gov. Ron DeSantis on if he’ll sign off on Walt Disney World and SeaWorld’s reopening plans, though the mayor received state confirmation that a dozen small attractions in the county are cleared to open.

Disney and SeaWorld on Wednesday unveiled their plans to welcome back guests to a local task force of business leaders, and Demings later sent a letter to DeSantis with his own endorsement of the strategy.

DeSantis has said theme parks could only reopen after securing local approval and his own signoff. Disney said it wanted to begin opening its parks on July 11, while SeaWorld would publicly open its three parks on June 11.

iFly Orlando and the Orlando Watersports Complex are among the dozen smaller attractions to be cleared. The venues all submitted their own reopening plans over the past two weeks, and Demings said he received letters Thursday from the head of the Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulation that their plans were adequate to reopen.

As more businesses continue to reopen, Dr. Raul Pino, the local state health officer, said Orange County has seen more positive cases of the novel coronavirus, but said the rate at which tests return as positive remains low at 2.8%.

In all, the county has 1,902 total cases of COVID-19, and two more people have died in Orange County, bringing the death toll to 41. One was a 70-year-old woman and the other was a 50-year-old woman and both were exposed to somebody else who was positive with the virus.

Pino said the two latest deaths are a stark reminder that at-risk populations such as the elderly and those with pre-existing health conditions should be isolated from others when possible, even their own families.

“Even in our homes, those individuals should be a little bit isolated from the rest of the family,” he said. “But also people the people who are coming back in from the community have to be concerned when they’ll be able to interact closely with those individuals.”

Pino said he’s yet to determine what the normal distribution of