Coronavirus live updates: Here’s what to know in South Florida on April 18
We’re keeping track of the latest news regarding the coronavirus in South Florida and around the state. Check back for updates throughout the day.
Saturday night numbers update
6:45 p.m.: Florida added 739 new reported cases of COVID-19 and 22 deaths since Friday night, indicating a possible return to a fluctuation in reported cases. This comes a day after the state saw its highest number of new cases since the outbreak began.
Florida’s Department of Health reported the statewide case total at 25,492 and the death toll at 748. Since Saturday morning, cases increased by 223 and eight new deaths were reported.
Read the full story here.
DeSantis: Public schools to remain online only
6:15 p.m.: Florida’s public schools will remain closed and stay online through the end of the 2019-2020 school year.
Gov. Ron DeSantis announced his unilateral decision at a press conference Saturday.
He said “differing opinions” led the state to make the call to keep schools closed. The state has changed its timeline for reopening schools several times, from initially just being out for roughly two weeks, then to April 15, then to May 1.
Read the full story here.
Blurred lines between campaigning and public office
6:10 p.m.: At a time of national crisis, when social distancing measures have forced much of Florida and Miami-Dade County into six-foot buffer zones and financial uncertainty, elected officials’ responsibilities include providing public information and assistance to the needy.
But with those same conditions halting most campaigning, it’s perhaps never been less clear where public service ends — and the campaign begins.
Read the full story here.
State will release names of elder care homes with COVID-19 cases
5:55 p.m.: After weeks of refusing to release the names of elder care facilities that have had residents and staff test positive for the respiratory disease caused by the novel coronavirus, Gov. Ron DeSantis announced Saturday that he has ordered health officials to release the names.
“I told them to do it as soon as possible. It’s not something we want to wait around on,’’ the governor said at an afternoon press conference at the Old Capitol building.
The governor and the Florida Department of Health has been under increasing pressure from families of residents and advocates such as AARP to release the names of the more than 100 nursing homes and assisted living facilities that have indicated they have positive COVID-19 cases on their campuses.
Read the full story here.
Miami-Dade disburses $900,000 in aid for farms and food distribution
5:20 p.m.: As farmers wait to receive their share of a $9.5 billion federal bailout for the agriculture industry, Miami-Dade County has allocated nearly $900,000 to food banks and community-based groups to purchase produce from the county’s farms.
Mayor Carlos Gimenez announced the coronavirus relief package at a press conference Saturday, but the program began on Monday, according to the head of the statewide packinghouse, Farm Share, which received $500,000 in county aid.
Read the full story here.
More than 25,000 confirmed cases in the state
Noon: Florida added 516 new reported cases of COVID-19 Saturday morning. The figure — bringing the total confirmations to 25,269 people — comes a day after the state reported its highest number of new cases since the outbreak began more than a month ago, according to the state’s Department of Health. Friday had seen 1,413 cases added.
On Saturday, Florida reported 14 new deaths since Friday evening to bring its total to 740.
Read the full story here.
Black people in Miami die of COVID-19 at a greater rate than whites, state data shows
11:20 a.m.: African Americans with COVID-19 are dying at a higher rate than white people and others who have tested positive for the disease in Miami-Dade County — a key finding buried in the Florida health department’s daily reports on the coronavirus pandemic, but one that experts say should help drive the state’s response in minority communities.
In Miami-Dade, the county with the most confirmed COVID-19 cases in Florida, African Americans who tested positive for the disease have died at a rate of 4.6 percent compared to a rate of 3.1 percent for white people and 1.7 percent for people whose race is classified as “other,” according to data provided in Friday’s health department report.
Read the full story here.
Leading the University of Miami through a global crisis
9:25 a.m.: When news first began to trickle out of Wuhan, China, at Christmastime about a strange, super-contagious sickness that may have originated in bats at a live animal market, University of Miami President Julio Frenk saw in his mind’s eye a world map turning dark shades of red, as if covered by a widening blood stain.
A man of science not given to melodrama, Frenk quickly but calmly convened a meeting of his emergency operations team at UM. Coronavirus was coming, he said. It was only a matter of when and how hard the invasion would hit.
Frenk predicted that the novel coronavirus would be more difficult to contain than the others he’d confronted during his career as a physician, Mexico’s secretary of health, an executive at the World Health Organization, senior fellow for global health at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and dean of Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health.
Frenk drew on his experience to prepare UM’s 17,000 students and 18,000 faculty and staff. He knew he would have to lock down the Coral Gables campus while ramping up the UHealth system and Miller School of Medicine.
Read the full story here.
Juvie judges facing hard choices in unusual circumstances
9:20 a.m.:For about a month, Broward judges who oversee juvenile court cases have discharged justice to their young defendants under exceptional circumstances: No one makes their first appearance before a judge in person anymore. Not adult defendants. Not children. The halls of justice are no longer open to the public. Coronavirus closed them.
Loved ones no longer crowd the wooden pews of the courtrooms, offering support to defendants and waiting to hear their friends’ and relatives’ fate.
But the justice system has kept on churning.
Read the full story here.
The race to test and house Miami’s homeless
9:10 a.m.: There are hundreds in downtown and Overtown who have seen the coronavirus pandemic manifest in ways that people with housing don’t experience. On the street, feedings have decreased, access to shelters and programming have become more difficult and the stream of people who would normally offer a helping hand no longer walk by.
Several weeks after the COVID-19 crisis upended daily life for people across Miami-Dade County, advocates are working to address the challenges faced by people sleeping on the street. They are frustrated that more people are not being provided housing and testing. They blame the Homeless Trust.
That frustration has drawn advocates from different corners of the area’s social safety net into a coalition that is taking on work they say the Trust and its chief, the powerful lobbyist Ron Book, should be doing.
Read the full story here.
Remembering the lives taken by COVID-19
9 a.m.: In lonely hospital beds, where the only contact with dying loved ones is through a screen, hundreds of South Floridians have become part of the grim toll of the global coronavirus pandemic.
COVID-19, the illness caused by the novel coronavirus, has killed more than 400 people in South Florida as of late Friday. It’s the lion’s share of the state’s total, which tops 700. It’s unclear when the toll will slow.
They were loved. And they will be missed.
Here are some of their stories.
Catch up to start the day
8:45 a.m.: Here are the coronavirus headlines to catch you up on what’s happening around South Florida and the state as Saturday begins.
▪ Juvie judges facing hard choices — like whether to lock up a kid in a possible petri dish
▪ Amid rebukes over secrecy, Florida prison system begins to reveal ravages of coronavirus
▪ Miami-Dade schools wants to feed more students. Teachers union makes website to help
▪ Florida sees most new coronavirus cases reported after three-day drop in numbers
▪ Miami police chief says he’s tested positive for COVID-19.
▪ Miami-Dade prepping park rules for COVID-19
▪ Broward spelling whiz’s word to describe national bee suspension: Conundrum
This story was originally published April 18, 2020 at 9:18 AM with the headline "Coronavirus live updates: Here’s what to know in South Florida on April 18."
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