This weekend brought unwelcome news of massive spikes in new cases of COVID-19 all over the state of Florida. The Florida Department of Health reported over 2,500 new coronavirus cases on Saturday and approximately 2,000 new cases on Sunday.
These last two days have been the biggest single-day increases in new cases yet. As of this writing, Florida’s total coronavirus cases stands at 75,568 with 2,931 deaths.
The numbers are sobering as Florida is in the midst of Phase 2 of Gov. DeSantis’ grand reopening plan for the state.
Locally, Orange County today reports 3,130 cases of coronavirus and 46 deaths.
As if to show these aren’t just abstract numbers, in Altamonte Springs, Kiwi’s Pub & Grill announced on their Facebook page Saturday that they are closing temporarily, effective immediately, after six people who visited the restaurant in the last week all tested positive for coronavirus.
Over in nearby St. Petersburg, three bars – Park & Rec, the Galley and Avenue Eat + Drink – all announced Friday that they would be closing temporarily after staff at each of the establishments tested positive for coronavirus.
In a final bit of news, Rebekah Jones, who was fired last month from Florida’s Department of Health after having helped design their COVID-19 data portal, has now launched her own data portal to track the coronavirus outbreak in Florida, and it’s a pretty bleak set of numbers.
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This article appears in Jun 10-16, 2020.