Florida, Illinois Emerge as Potential Coronavirus Hotspots
Recent updates to state coronavirus case numbers suggest Florida and Illinois may join New York and Washington as hotspots for the virus, with Governor Ron DeSantis (R., Fla.) announcing a stay-at-home order for southern Florida until May and Illinois seeing its largest single-day increase in cases on Sunday.
Former FDA commissioner Scott Gottlieb on Monday warned that the two states could be “new epicenters of spread.”
THREAD: We'll update charts daily for Florida, Louisiana, Illinois, and Michigan as epidemic becomes national in scope; new epicenters of spread emerge. Florida faces significant challenges with growing spread from seeds likely introduced weeks if not months ago and slow reaction pic.twitter.com/NZRqwGylFF
— Scott Gottlieb, MD (@ScottGottliebMD) March 30, 2020
Update for Illinois pic.twitter.com/nCMqdTGKdF
— Scott Gottlieb, MD (@ScottGottliebMD) March 30, 2020
DeSantis said at a press conference Monday that his order will apply to Broward, Miami-Dade, Palm Beach and Monroe counties, which have over 50 percent of the state’s 5000-plus cases. The state’s COVID-19 case count jumped 523, according to a state update on Monday morning.
“The ‘Safer-At-Home’ [order] is the right move for southeast Florida,” DeSantis said. “This is the time to do the right thing. Listen to all of your local officials. We will do this through the middle of May, and then see where we’re at.”
On Sunday, Illinois health officials announced 18 new deaths — including that of an infant —and 1,105 new cases of the coronavirus, the state’s worse increase to-date despite having the first case of human-to-human transmission in the U.S. over a month ago.
Governor J. B. Pritzker warned that the upward curve is likely to continue for weeks.
“It is fair to say that most of the models I’ve seen . . . show that we’ll be peaking sometime in April,” Pritzker said at his daily coronavirus news conference. “We’re not yet close to that.”
Last week, New York governor Andrew Cuomo warned other states that New York’s outbreak was “your future.”
“New York is going first. We have the highest and the fastest rate of infection. What is happening to New York is going to wind up happening to California, and Washington state, and Illinois,” Cuomo stated. “Where we are today, you will be in three weeks or four weeks or five weeks or six weeks. We are your future.”
