Florida Governor Ron DeSantis assured this Saturday during a press conference from Tallahassee that the vast majority of new coronavirus cases in the state are young people, who also do not present symptoms of COVID-19.
The statements were made the day after Florida broke the record for coronavirus cases, with 4,049 infections recorded during the last 24 hours.
DeSantis also said Florida is now in a better position to combat the coronavirus compared to last March, when lockdowns and quarantine measures were enacted.
Another point that the governor highlighted is that currently in Florida there is more capacity to test for the virus, since when the closures were decreed, only people who had symptoms could be tested.
The governor added that the average age of recent positive COVID-19 cases is 44 years old and the hospitalization rate remains low.
On Saturday, the Department of Health reported that the total number of coronavirus cases in Florida is 93,797. According to authorities, so far there have been 3,144 deaths due to COVID-19 and 12,939 hospitalizations.
There is no doubt that after the easing of the quarantine and the reopening of the state, the number of infections has skyrocketed. Some experts fear that Florida will become the next epicenter of the coronavirus in the United States.
DeSantis has made several erratic statements in the last month giving various reasons to explain the rise in contagion cases.
He initially attributed the increase in cases to the fact that several laboratories had delivered a large number of their test results at the same time.
The governor later said that these were increases in agricultural communities, who are, according to DeSantis, “overwhelmingly Hispanic.”
DeSantis has also suggested that the anti-racist protests in recent weeks may have increased the number of infections. And finally, yesterday he said that the majority of new cases are young and healthy people, who hardly present symptoms.
Many state politicians, including DeSantis, They pressured the federal authorities to begin the de-escalation, fearing that a prolonged quarantine after the pandemic could devastate tourism, retail and other Florida industries.
Florida unemployment rate reached the record figure of 14.5% in May as the state still reels from the economic shutdowns caused by the coronavirus outbreak.
The governor He also announced ten days ago a plan to reopen schools starting in August, the month that marks the official start of the academic year.
On the other hand, the United States reached 2,222,576 confirmed cases of COVID-19 and 119,131 deaths this Saturday, according to the independent count from Johns Hopkins University.
New York remains the North American state hardest hit by the pandemic, with 386,200 confirmed cases and 31,015 deaths, a figure only below the United Kingdom, Brazil and Italy.
In recent weeks, the focus of the pandemic in the United States has shifted from the battered East Coast to the states of the so-called "Sun Belt", such as California, Florida, Texas and Arizona, which together account for almost half of the of new cases throughout the country.
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