Miami-Dade’s COVID spread complicating mayor’s plan to lift midnight curfew next week

Test results for COVID-19 are heading the wrong way in Miami-Dade County, a slight shift that’s complicating a plan Mayor Daniella Levine Cava announced a month ago to lift the county’s midnight curfew next week if testing statistics improved.

Under pressure by some county commissioners and businesses to let restaurants and bars stay open overnight, Levine Cava in early March announced a timetable that kept the restrictions in place during the peak of the spring break season.

In a March 5 memo to commissioners, Levine Cava said she would lift the curfew April 5 if COVID-19 conditions improved and if the two-week average of positive COVID results countywide hit 5.5% or less.

With one week left to go to move the numbers, Miami-Dade’s “positivity” rate is inching higher, not lower. After dipping below 6% for most of last week, the daily positivity rate hit 6.06% on Saturday and 7.59% on Sunday.

Those results skewed the curve even further away from hitting Levine Cava’s curfew target. The new two-week average was 6.3% heading into the last full week before April 5 arrives, roughly the same level as when Levine Cava announced her plan in early March.

A week ago, the average was 6.2%.

Levine Cava’s memo described a 5.5% average as a requirement for lifting the curfew. On Tuesday, the mayor and her top spokesperson emphasized other numbers would also be part of the decision.

“The 5.5% is a benchmark used to gauge community spread, coupled with hospitalization rates and deaths, and now percent of vaccinated residents,” said Rachel Johnson, Levine Cava’s top spokesperson. The mayor is meeting with medical advisers “and reviewing the data and trends so we can provide an update to the community on the curfew by April 5.”

Curfews under Gimenez, Levine Cava

The countywide curfew, which expires at 6 a.m. each day, remains Miami-Dade’s most embattled COVID-19 emergency restriction.

Then-mayor Carlos Gimenez first imposed a countywide curfew in July, as a surge of COVID-19 infections spread through the population. The curfew started at 10 p.m. then, but was moved back as the positivity rate declined and COVID-19 hospitalization numbers receded.

At a Miami Herald online forum on Tuesday, Levine Cava said she hoped “we’ll continue with these positive trends” allowing the county to “revisit” the midnight curfew.

While the positivity rate is on the rise, COVID-19 hospitalizations have been dropping for the last two weeks — from an average of 623 per day on March 14 to an average of 547 on Sunday, the most recent data available.

Levine Cava defended the curfew, but also emphasized masking, cleaning and social distancing as the key to protecting against COVID-19.

“I know many are eager to eliminate the curfew,” she said during the Herald’s Florida Priorities panel discussion on post-pandemic Miami. “But let’s just say, from midnight to 6, a lot of people are not on their guard. They may be partying. They may be having more to drink...We don’t want to have these super-spreader events.”

Spring Break and COVID spread in Miami-Dade

Last week, Levine Cava’s top medical adviser predicted a link between the county’s influx of spring break visitors and more local COVID-19 spread.

“Spring break obviously is going to have an impact on our positivity rate across the county,” Dr. Peter Paige, a Jackson Health administrator who also serves as Levine Cava’s chief medical officer, said during a public briefing Friday for county commissioners.

“Even though spring breakers may come in and leave — at least a high percentage of them will — they’ll interact with a lot of people who live here locally,” Paige said. “We still have to remain vigilant.”

So far, Miami-Dade has fended off court challenges to its curfew, allowing it to remain the only county in Florida ordering restaurants, bars and other businesses deemed non-essential to shut down at midnight.

Jonathan Schwartz, a Doral lawyer representing Wynwood bars and restaurants in one curfew case and the Mr. Jones nightclub on Miami Beach in another, said it makes no sense to punish businesses catering to overnight customers.

Why should restaurants on South Beach’s Ocean Drive be allowed to serve drinks to large crowds throughout the day during spring break, he asked, while clubs that would market to the same customers at night can’t sell the the same drinks?

“A lot of these guys are on the verge of losing everything they’ve built,” he said of his clients. “It’s horrendous.”

Broward County also imposed its own curfew in late December, but saw a judge block that restriction in a case that’s still underway in federal court.

‘Everybody thinks COVID is over’

Broward scored a win last week on appeal, with the Eleventh Circuit allowing the county to reimpose its original curfew order. But that’s not happening, according to Mayor Steve Geller.

During the court fight, the county and Fort Lauderdale agreed to close restaurants and bars over “egregious” violations of county COVID-19 rules, such as requiring masks indoors. The county plans to continue enforcement, rather than force all businesses to close overnight under a curfew.

“We are not going to be doing a new curfew, barring unforeseen circumstances,” Geller said.

Positivity rates are climbing in Broward, too, and Geller said the lack of a curfew doesn’t reflect any comfort with the current COVID-19 statistics.

“I’m feeling horrible about COVID. We are heading in exactly the wrong direction,” he said.

“I can’t tell you why,” Geller said. “Is it because of spring break?...Is it because everybody thinks COVID is over?”