South Florida airports say state stopped screening Tri-state flights for quarantine
South Florida’s largest commercial airports say the Florida Department of Health has stopped enforcing Gov. Ron DeSantis’ order requiring travelers from Connecticut, New Jersey and New York to quarantine for 14 days after arriving in the state.
The order, first put in place on March 23, when the Northeast was the epicenter of the pandemic, was meant to curb the spread of COVID-19 by isolating people coming into Florida from known virus hot spots. The Florida National Guard and Florida Department of Health staff members began boarding and greeting arriving flights at South Florida airports to collect contact information from travelers and hand out forms with instructions to quarantine.
Travelers who did not quarantine were threatened with jail time.
But starting the last week in June, state staff members stopped showing up at the airports to meet travelers and have them fill out screening forms, ending enforcement of the order, spokesmen for Miami International Airport and Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport confirmed.
“The Dept. of Health is no longer distributing or collecting the forms for arriving passengers,” Fort Lauderdale airport spokesman Gregory Meyer told the Miami Herald in a Monday email. “That operation is no longer underway at FLL.”
Greg Chin, an MIA spokesman, said members of the National Guard continued to screen passengers until June 26. “They are no longer doing that at MIA, and we hear that is the case at the other Florida airports as well,” Chin wrote in an email.
He said Miami-Dade County, which runs the airport, did not receive anything in writing from the state about why the staff was pulling out of the airport. “The National Guard just informed us that they would no longer be meeting those flights,” he said.
Albert Moscoso, a spokesman for the Florida Department of Health, confirmed Monday that the quarantine orders are “still in effect.”
Meyer, the Fort Lauderdale airport spokesman, told the Miami Herald Friday that the airport has “not been given a timeline addressing when or if [the orders] will expire.”
DeSantis first issued an order requiring the quarantine of travelers flying into Florida from Connecticut, New Jersey and New York in late March, at a time when New York and the U.S. Northeast were the epicenter of the global pandemic. The order required those travelers to isolate for 14 days or the duration of their time in Florida, whichever was shorter. Anyone required to quarantine was forced to do so on their own dime.
The following day, DeSantis issued a second, similar order that laid out the same restrictions for all travelers from the tri-state area, without mention of air travel.
DeSantis also issued an executive order on March 27 requiring that travelers heading into Florida from Louisiana self-isolate for two weeks. At that time, Louisiana was also experiencing an upward trajectory in cases. That order was superseded by a June 5 order from DeSantis that, as part of the state’s move to “Phase 2” of reopening, extended quarantine directives for tri-state travelers.
The Florida Department of Transportation, which was to facilitate highway checkpoints for travelers driving in from Louisiana, did not address Louisiana in an email to the Miami Herald Monday, but a spokeswoman said a checkpoint previously in place at the Florida-Georgia line had been discontinued. She did not say when that happened.
All three orders stated that travelers who did not self-isolate for two weeks would be committing second-degree misdemeanors punishable by up to 60 days in jail or a fine of $500. The orders were to remain in place as long as the state continued to be under the emergency declaration signed by DeSantis or until they are lifted by another executive order after advice from the surgeon general.
DeSantis extended his emergency declaration on July 7 for two more months.
New York City and surrounding areas were among the hardest hit by COVID-19 starting in March. But after imposing strict social-distancing and mask requirements, the state’s hospitalizations and positivity rate have plummeted.
Florida has followed the opposite trajectory, reaching record high hospitalizations and positivity rates this month. In late June, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and the governors of New Jersey and Connecticut issued a joint travel advisory that requires travelers from Florida into their states to quarantine for 14 days or risk penalties.
This story was originally published July 20, 2020 at 12:49 PM.
