COVID Cases Rise In Florida

Nutley's annual Spring Break was last week and while many staff and students chose to stay home or travel locally, some did venture back into the travel arena. A popular, domestic destination was Florida. Spring Break travel to Florida was also popular among college students and now, the state, is seeing a rise of Coronavirus cases. According to the New York Times, “The number of confirmed cases in Florida has been steadily rising, though hospitalizations and deaths are still down.”

Throughout the whole of the pandemic, Florida has never enforced a statewide mask mandate, in fact they went as far as to make it illegal for local governments to enforce a mask mandate of their own. According to the New York Times, “Florida has never had a mask mandate and in September, Mr. Ron DeSantis, Governor of Florida, banned local governments from enforcing mandates of their own.'' This move is likely part of the reason why Covid cases are rising in Florida, due to the college students on spring break refusing to wear masks whenever possible and Florida not having a mask mandate means that students can walk around wherever they want without having a mask on.

The Rise of COVID cases in Florida can also be attributed to the new strain of COVID-19 which is more infectious than the previous one. 

As vaccines roll out and deaths lower and infection rates drop from state to state, Florida is one of the only states whose cases of infection are still rising. Although deaths are down, Florida’s infection rate is rising partly due to the spring break of college students, lack of mask mandates, and a newer more infectious strain of the virus being discovered and being transmitted to the U.S.