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Florida Governor, at Long Last, Orders Residents to Stay Home to Avoid Coronavirus Florida Governor, at Long Last, Orders Residents to Stay Home to Avoid Coronavirus
(about 3 hours later)
MIAMI — Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, who for weeks has resisted more stringent statewide measures to slow the spread of the coronavirus, on Wednesday signed an order directing the state’s more than 21 million residents to largely stay at home. MIAMI — Florida’s coronavirus cases kept ballooning, especially in the dense neighborhoods of Miami and Fort Lauderdale. Hospitals in Fort Myers and Naples begged for donations of masks and other protective equipment. Young people started to die.
Mr. DeSantis, a Republican, relented after a morning telephone call with President Trump, who on Tuesday delivered the gravest projections yet from the White House suggesting that up to 240,000 Americans could die from the infection, even with serious restrictions in place. And still, Gov. Ron DeSantis resisted. The man entrusted with keeping many of the country’s grandparents safe did not want to dictate that all Floridians had to stay at home.
The governor said he started coming around to the necessity of a statewide order once the White House dropped its earlier, rosier suggestion that stringent social distancing measures could be lifted by mid-April, and extended national guidelines to combat the coronavirus until April 30. What it took for Mr. DeSantis to change his mind on Wednesday and finally issue a statewide order was a phone call with President Trump. A day earlier, the White House had provided a grave reckoning of how many American lives might be lost — up to 240,000 — without a national commitment to immediate, drastic action in every state.
“When the president did the 30-day extension, to me, that was, ‘People aren’t just going to go back to work,’” Mr. DeSantis said at a news conference in Tallahassee, the state capital. “That’s a national pause button.” The number of coronavirus infections in Florida had jumped by more than 1,000 on Tuesday, its largest 24-hour increase, to reach nearly 7,000, giving rise to worries that the infection was already dangerously out of hand.
His order, which takes effect at 12:01 a.m. on Friday, limits movement and personal interactions outside the home to “essential” services and activities. For Mr. DeSantis, a 41-year-old first-term Republican governor considered a contender for higher political office, relenting was an acknowledgment that the Florida economy, so reliant on tourism, would inevitably grind to a halt because of the virus. Without statewide measures, recovery from the pandemic might only take longer.
The number of coronavirus cases in the state jumped by more than 1,000 on Tuesday to reach nearly 7,000. The total is probably an undercount because experts say testing, especially of younger and asymptomatic people, remains insufficient. At least 87 people have died. “People aren’t just going to go back to work” by April 15, Mr. DeSantis said at a news conference in Tallahassee, the state capital, calling the stringent social-distancing orders that take effect on Friday “a national pause button.”
The coronavirus poses a unique risk for Florida, the third-largest state in the country, where a quarter of the population is older than 60 and the economy relies in large part on an $86 billion-a-year tourism industry fueled by 125 million annual visitors, including young spring break visitors who may have helped the virus spread. Thirty-seven states have adopted statewide orders for people to stay at home, including most recently Georgia and Mississippi. The full scale of the virus threat delivered by the White House was a powerful new message to conservative governors who have been following the president’s lead.
Texas, where Gov. Greg Abbott expressed a preference for leaving such initiatives to local authorities, remains the largest state in the country without such an order; it has about 4,000 coronavirus cases, significantly fewer than Florida.
At least 101 people have died in Florida, and testing, especially of younger and asymptomatic people, remains insufficient.
Photos of crowded beaches and megachurches shared on social media over the weekend prompted national outrage directed at Florida, which has blamed its outbreak in part on outsiders. The sheriff in Hillsborough County, which includes Tampa, had a Pentecostal pastor arrested on Monday for recklessly endangering hundreds of parishioners he beckoned to church.
So Mr. DeSantis’s stay-at-home order, even though it lists many exceptions and does not close public beaches, came as a relief to public health officials and hospital administrators who had been clamoring for stronger efforts to keep people home.
“I am very happy to hear this news,” said Dr. Lawrence Antonucci, president and chief executive of the Lee Health hospital system in Fort Myers. “This should help tremendously in slowing the spread of Covid-19 in Florida.”
The coronavirus poses a unique risk for Florida because a quarter of the state’s population of more than 21 million is older than 60, a percentage surpassed only by Maine. The economy relies in large part on an $86 billion-a-year tourism industry fueled by 125 million annual visitors, including young spring break visitors who may have helped spread the virus.
“Obviously in Florida, the tourism is totally shot right now,” Mr. DeSantis said.“Obviously in Florida, the tourism is totally shot right now,” Mr. DeSantis said.
Mr. DeSantis has also been reluctant to break with Mr. Trump, who helped him win the governorship in 2018. Their close relationship has weighed on the president throughout the federal response to the coronavirus threat. A newly declared resident of Florida, Mr. Trump sees the state as vital to his re-election, and he has been responsive to Mr. DeSantis’s requests for such things as drive-through testing sites and protective equipment for health care workers. The governor has been reluctant to break with Mr. Trump, according to Republican officials, who helped him win the Republican primary and then the governorship in 2018. Their close relationship has weighed on the president throughout the federal response to the coronavirus threat: A newly declared Florida resident, Mr. Trump sees the state as vital to his re-election, and he has been responsive to Mr. DeSantis’s requests for such things as drive-through testing sites and protective equipment for health care workers. They have spoken by phone four times in the past week, according to the governor’s public schedule.
Jared Moskowitz, the state’s emergency management director, said that Florida has received four shipments from the federal stockpile of supplies, including 500,000 N95 masks, 250,000 face shields, 714,000 gloves, 1.2 million surgical masks and 200,000 gowns. As the Trump administration has put a spotlight on the spiraling number of coronavirus cases in New York and New Jersey, Mr. DeSantis has until now tried to frame the state’s outbreak as primarily a problem for Miami, Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach.
Those areas are home to more than half of the state’s infections, including six deaths at a single assisted-living facility. The governor repeatedly pointed to the fact that millions of visitors arrive to South Florida from abroad — and from New York.
Mr. DeSantis called Mr. Trump on Saturday morning and complained, as he had publicly before the call, that New Yorkers flocking to Fort Lauderdale and elsewhere in South Florida were bringing the virus with them. Mr. Trump responded by tweeting that he was considering a quarantine of the New York tristate area, a statement that flummoxed officials in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut. His initial plan was to flood the hardest-hit region with testing sites and a field hospital, and try to limit new travelers. The White House listened. Florida has received material for three testing sites and four shipments from the federal stockpile of supplies, including 500,000 N95 masks, 250,000 face shields, 714,000 gloves, 1.2 million surgical masks and 200,000 gowns.
The president’s aides — some of whom have tired of Mr. DeSantis’s special requests — tried to explain to the president that it would be almost impossible to enforce such a quarantine. Mr. Trump has also resisted a broader national stay-at-home order, which his advisers see as at odds with years of Republican orthodoxy about states’ rights, and unfair to states that are not experiencing major outbreaks. Last week, Mr. DeSantis imposed a quarantine on travelers from the New York area. Then, on Saturday morning, he phoned Mr. Trump and complained that New Yorkers flocking to Fort Lauderdale and other nearby cities were still bringing the virus with them. Mr. Trump responded on Twitter, saying that he was considering a quarantine of the New York tristate area, a statement that flummoxed officials in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut.
As recently as Monday, Mr. DeSantis had insisted that the only stay-at-home order he had signed, for the state’s four most densely populated counties from Key West to West Palm Beach, would be needed only through April 15. The president’s aides — some of whom have tired of Mr. DeSantis’s special requests and believe he takes advantage of the relationship with the White House — tried to explain to the president that it would be almost impossible to enforce such a quarantine. Mr. Trump has also resisted a broader national stay-at-home order, which his advisers see as at odds with years of Republican orthodoxy about states’ rights, and unfair to states that are not experiencing major outbreaks.
On Tuesday, Mr. DeSantis said one reason he had not extended the order statewide was because the White House coronavirus task force had made no such recommendation. On Sunday, the White House dropped its earlier, rosier suggestion that stringent social-distancing measures could be lifted by mid-April, and extended national guidelines to combat the coronavirus until April 30. And on Tuesday, Mr. Trump sounded a distinctly somber note, as he acknowledged for the first time that the next two weeks will be “painful” and allowed that predictions of more than 100,000 deaths were realistic possibilities.
Still, when Mr. DeSantis on Monday signed a more limited stay-at-home order for four counties from Key West to Palm Beach, he insisted that it would be needed only through April 15. Because most of the affected cities and counties, like other large jurisdictions in the state, had already enacted their own orders, the governor conceded his own action was of little consequence.
Cellphone location data showed that people in places like Jacksonville and Daytona Beach in northeast Florida, which were not on lockdown, were frequently traveling across county lines. Commissioners in southwest Florida’s Lee County, which likewise had no stay-at-home order, maintained that they did not need one, in part because the governor had not suggested it.
“It seems like he’s listening to the Florida Chamber and Associated Industries and business interests more than he is to medical professionals and health care professionals, which is incredibly disappointing,” Mayor Rick Kriseman of St. Petersburg said before the governor’s latest order. He added that neither the governor nor his staff had called at any point to ask about the city’s needs.
“I may not have agreed on a whole lot of things with Rick Scott when he was governor,” said Mr. Kriseman, a Democrat. “But every time there was a storm approaching the state, I got a phone call from him saying, ‘Just wanted to check in, see how you’re doing, is there anything you need?’” (Mr. Scott, now the state’s junior Republican senator, called him on Saturday.)
On Monday afternoon, Dr. Scott Rivkees, the Florida surgeon general, spoke with Dr. Ali H. Mokdad, a professor of health metrics sciences and chief strategy officer for population health at the University of Washington, Dr. Mokdad said. Dr. Mokdad, who keeps a home in Daytona Beach, said he recommended that Florida issue a statewide stay-at-home order.
“I told him, ‘Listen, they are working very well here in Washington State,’” he said. “‘You could save a lot of lives there, and you could spare your hospitals a big and heavy demand.’”
“They could have saved lives — all of us, even in Seattle — if we’d enacted these measures earlier on,” Dr. Mokdad added. “Everybody made, in a way, a belated response.”
On Tuesday, shortly before Mr. Trump’s grim coronavirus news briefing, Mr. DeSantis said one reason he had not extended the order statewide was because the White House coronavirus task force had made no such recommendation.
By the time Mr. DeSantis and Mr. Trump spoke on Wednesday, Mr. DeSantis, now under intense public pressure from local officials, Democrats and a growing chorus of national commentators, had come to the conclusion that he needed to do more. When he had decided initially that it would be necessary to focus only on infections flaring in South Florida, he said, the president had backed him.
“But at the same time, he understood that this is another 30-day situation,” he said. “You’ve got to just do what makes the most sense.”
Patricia Mazzei reported from Miami, and Maggie Haberman from New York.Patricia Mazzei reported from Miami, and Maggie Haberman from New York.