(Image source from: flgov.com)

The governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis says that they won’t shut down even though the state has recorded the highest number of Covid-19 cases since the start of the pandemic.

The United States of America is the worst affected country from the pandemic since a long time with over 2.18 million recorded cases and 119 thousand deaths. The total infections worldwide stand at 7.94 million and 435 thousand deaths. Florida is one of the worst affected states in the country with over 80,109 confirmed coronavirus cases and 2,931 deaths.

Even though Florida recorded the highest peak of Covid-19 cases on Tuesday with 2,783 positive coronavirus cases, the governor of the state says that the state won’t go into a lockdown again and that reopening of the bars and restaurants isn’t the reason in the hike of the cases.

Florida was one of the first states to reopen phase-1 very early on in the first week of May and Phase-2 was reopened in the first week of June. All the bars and restaurants were reopened earlier in this month with 50% capacity. Though the state was reopened earlier in June, some exceptions were made in the southern parts of the state where the pandemic has hit the hardest and the businesses are still shut. One such county in the southern part is Miami which has not entered the phase-2 of reopening yet. The Mayor of Miami Francis Suarez also confirmed on Monday that the city is not going to enter phase-2 anytime soon.

In a conference on Tuesday Ron DeSantis, governor of Florida denied all allegations which stated that the early reopening of the state had caused the hike in the cases of coronavirus. He also went on to add that the reopening of bars and restaurants has nothing to do with the hike in cases. He also focused mainly on the attribution of the testing rise in the state and calling the testing of coronavirus in the state as purely widespread a surveillance style. He also declined all the proposals and rumours of shutting down the state and said clearly that the state is doing better and won’t go in the state of lockdown again. He also attributed a fact that earlier the average age of the coronavirus infected person was 60 in March and now it has dropped to 37 years old.

The governor of the state also stated that the young population is getting infected more which means the death rate are decreasing and the hospitalization facilities are not very much needed despite the rise in the coronavirus cases.

Texas, Arizona and Florida have recorded single day hike record of Covid-19 cases since the beginning of the pandemic.

By Deepika Agarwal