Miami-Dade getting 10 p.m. curfew as mayor closes casinos, strip clubs to fight COVID

Six weeks after reopening most businesses, Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez began closing some again and announced a 10 p.m. curfew starting Friday as the county’s COVID spread worsens and hospitalization rates hit new records.

Gimenez announced Thursday evening a reversal of his most recent reopenings, and said he was closing casinos, strip clubs, movie theaters and other entertainment venues allowed to open through a June 4 order. It’s not clear how many businesses will be impacted by the announced curfew. The mayor’s office said commuters are exempt, as are essential workers. A spokeswoman also said restaurants can continue delivering food once the curfew takes effect.

“This curfew is meant to stop people from venturing out and hanging out with friends in groups, which has shown to be spreading the virus rapidly,” Gimenez said in a statement.

He said his order will also tighten mask rules at restaurants, requiring customers to wear facial coverings at all times unless eating or drinking. Prior rules allowed customers to remove them when they sat down.

Gimenez hasn’t released his planned order, so the details aren’t known. Patricia Abril, an Gimenez spokeswoman, said the order will allow restaurants to continue delivering food throughout the curfew and will not apply to people to commuting to work.

Sergio Gazitua, president of the family-owned Sergio’s restaurant chain, said the expanded mask rule at restaurant tables would frustrate customers even more. The current rule allows customers to take off their masks once they sit down.

“Obviously this is hard to police,” Gazitua said. “It’s going to be annoying to talk to someone with a mask on.” He urged Gimenez to exempt people from the same household.

Gazitua said he was seeing a slow rebound in the middle of June, but that business started to vanish as COVID cases began to rise. “When we saw this fear in Florida, we saw people pulling back,” he said. Two bartenders the chain recently hired have been sent home for a lack of business, he said.

Joe Martinez, a county commissioner representing a suburban district, called the crackdown misguided. “I don’t think the curfew is the answer, or an appropriate response to irresponsible people,” he said. “While it doesn’t completely shutdown businesses, it certainly curtails restaurants’ ability to survive.”

Gimenez’s announcement came hours after he said he didn’t want to close businesses because of the economic “suffering” it causes, reflects the increasingly alarming situation facing the mayor as COVID cases surge and available hospital beds decline.

Even so, his announcement also extends his prior strategy of targeting Miami-Dade’s nightlife and restaurant scene, and not the broad collection of offices, shops, parks and marinas he ordered closed in March at the start of the coronavirus emergency. Last week, he announced temporary closures of beaches during the Fourth of July weekend, followed by restrictions on hotel pools and early closings for restaurants.

The county curfew is the latest example of a COVID tactic implemented at the city level and then adopted by Gimenez after publicly criticizing it. Miami and other cities imposed municipal curfews in March as anti-COVID measures, but Gimenez called them drains on police resources and not needed. (Gimenez did impose countywide curfews when racial-justice demonstrations were held in Miami last month.)

Gimenez enacted a countywide rule Thursday morning requiring masks in most public places, a step Miami and other cities took last week.

In announcing the latest curfew, which expires at 6 a.m. daily, Gimenez cited staffing shortages at local hospitals, where COVID patients now outnumber available intensive-care beds.

“ I met with our medical experts this afternoon to discuss what other steps we can take to stop the spread of virus infection and ensure that our hospitals have sufficient capacity,” he said. “At this time, we have plenty of beds, but some hospitals are experiencing staffing shortages.”

The latest county statistics show more than 1,300 COVID patients in hospitals countywide, a record. Of those, 281 are in intensive-care beds, occupying about 63% of the ICU beds that would be otherwise available. Florida is still maintaining a 450-bed field hospital at the Miami Beach Convention Center for COVID overflow, and coronavirus cases take up just 40% of the non-ICU beds across the county.

The closure orders targets the most recent businesses allowed to reopen: entertainment venues. While reopening orders that Gimenez authorized in May allowed all covered establishments to resume operations, entertainment venues, including theaters, had to have plans approved by the county.

The category includes the Adrienne Arsht performing-arts center, planned site of the Oct. 15 presidential debate. The county-owned Arsht is run by a non-profit, and has not received administrative approval to reopen.

While the Gimenez order closes casinos, it does not cover tribal lands, so the Miccosukee casino can continue to operate.

This story was originally published July 2, 2020 at 7:36 PM.