Florida has registered its highest single-day COVID-19 case number as the Delta variant continues to spread through predominantly unvaccinated communities.
The Miami Herald reported on Saturday that Florida saw 21,683 new cases of COVID-19. This handily bests the state’s previous record of 19,334 on January 7, which occurred during what is regarded as the worst month for the pandemic in the U.S.
Florida has been seen as the epicenter for the new wave of the novel coronavirus pandemic, spurred on by the highly virulent Delta variant. Daily case numbers had been approaching record levels in recent days—17,093 on Thursday and 17,589 on Friday. The state’s average for the past week has been 15,818 cases per day.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Florida lead the U.S. in new cases in the last seven days with over 103,000, which far exceeds much larger states including Texas (47,159) and California (35,464).
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The CDC’s community transmission tracker also lists nearly every county in Florida as having “high” levels of transmission, aside from Glades County, which is listed as “substantial.” Substantial is the threshold at which the CDC recommends that all residents, vaccinated and unvaccinated, wear masks indoors, according to its most recent mask guidance.
Newsweek recently reported that all of Florida’s counties were previously listed as having high community transmission, a dubious distinction it shared only with Arkansas and Oklahoma.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis recently pushed for citizens to get vaccinated, but he has also discouraged mask mandates for children during the upcoming school year. On Friday, he signed an executive order that prevents Florida schools from implementing mask mandates. It would allow the Florida Department of Education and Department of Health to create rules about mask wearing in schools, with the aim of leaving the decision to parents.
“I think that this decision about whether parents want their kids to have to wear masks all day at school, I think that’s a decision that falls squarely within the concord of this Parents’ Bill of Rights that I signed,” DeSantis said.
This order also empowers Florida’s commissioner of education to take away state funding from schools that step out of line and establish mask rules anyway.
Newsweek reached out to Gov. DeSantis for a comment. This story will be updated with any response.
Florida Sets Daily COVID-19 Record With 21,683 New Cases
Source: Gwapo Pinoys PH
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