While he hasn’t issued a mandatory shelter-in-place or a shutdown of all non-essential businesses like have been done in other states and cities in the United States, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis did say he has made entering Florida from the COVID-19 hot spot of New York more stringent.
At a press conference earlier, DeSantis said he’s assigned an executive order that anyone coming to Florida on a flight from the New York City region must self-quarantine or isolate for 14 days.
“That’s the only way we can be sure that the virus won’t be re-introduced in the state of Florida,” he said. “If you look at what happened in New York, when they did the stay-at-home order, what did people do? Well, a lot of people fled the city. And they’re going to stay with their parents or they’re flying. We’ve had huge amounts of people flying in.”
Regarding a state-wide quarantine, DeSantis said he’s so far favored a tiered approach to restrictions on people’s activities, with more closures and restrictions in South Florida, which accounts for over 500 of the state’s 1,171 cases as of Monday morning. At the other end of the spectrum, 46 of Florida’s 67 counties have eight or fewer confirmed cases.
“It is not clear to me that doing a massive shutdown of the entire state would even work,” he said, noting many people would just not comply.
As a reminder, Osceola County has an 11 p.m. to 5 a.m. curfew in place.
