MIAMI (AP) - Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis downplayed a continued rise in confirmed coronavirus cases after the state reopened by saying Friday that as testing increases, more asymptomatic younger people are driving up positive results.
He also hinted that recent protests over the death of George Floyd in Minnesota might drive up positive tests, and said some people have started to disregard advice to wear masks, social distance and avoid large crowds.
“You’re going to find more asymptomatic cases. As you test more, you find more. And that’s basically been something we believed from the beginning,” DeSantis said. “We’re testing more than 30,000 a day, you’re going to see us identify more than 2,000 cases.”
Florida has had nearly 90,000 confirmed cases of the coronavirus, resulting in more than 3,100 deaths. The state has allowed bars, restaurants and some theme parks to reopen, and since then cases have spiked. On Friday, the state announced 3,822 new confirmed cases, the highest daily total since the pandemic started.
Desantis blamed part of the recent spike on people’s behavior.
“I think that we’ve started to see some erosion on social distancing from probably some of the younger population,” DeSantis said.
He said the Department of Health will begin a media campaign to remind people to wash their hands, wear masks and socially distance.
DeSantis said he hasn’t had the Department of Health substantiate that protests over the death of Floyd, an African-American man who died while a white police officer had his knee on his neck, have driven up cases, but said he suspected it may have contributed to more virus cases.
“Obviously there’s a correlation there, but I wouldn’t want to say that until we have the evidence,” DeSantis said. “You had massive demonstrations of people … and all of a sudden the social distancing took a back seat to social justice.”
He said he respected protesters constitutional right to demonstrate, but that it could have contributed to the spread of the virus.
“You may think that protest is the most important thing you can to do as a citizen, I respect that, but understand from a virus perspective, gathering with 5,000 people to protest something that’s important to you is no different than gathering with 5,000 people to do something else that may not be as significant,” DeSantis said.
___
Follow AP coverage of the pandemic at https://apnews.com/VirusOutbreak and https://apnews.com/UnderstandingtheOutbreak.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.