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QUICK UPDATES
Florida Adds More Than 7,000 New Cases, Resident Deaths Surpass 28,000 Mark
Updated Tuesday at 3:20 p.m.
Florida’s Department of Health confirmed an additional 7,023 positive cases of COVID-19 Tuesday. Florida has a total of 1,790,758 confirmed positive cases, according to the state's health department.
Tuesday's update also included the announcement of 233 new resident deaths, increasing the statewide number of Floridians who died to 28,048. Factoring in non-resident deaths the number of deaths due to COVID-19 is 28,526.
Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties make up 9,527 of those reported deaths. Monroe County has reported 42 deaths due to COVID-19.
— WLRN News
Florida Walmarts And Sam’s Clubs To Begin Giving Coronavirus Vaccines
Updated Tuesday at 1:55 p.m.
Florida Walmarts and Sam’s Clubs will receive 25,000 doses of the COVID vaccine at their pharmacies by the end of this week and begin giving them to seniors.
Gov. Ron DeSantis appeared with company executives at a Walmart Supercenter in Jacksonville Tuesday to announce 119 Walmarts across 34 counties will begin giving out shots on Friday. DeSantis said about 10 of those Walmart stores are in Broward and some are in Miami-Dade County, both of which had lacked pharmacies providing the vaccines.
“Walmart has so many people who shop here, if you look at the setup I think it will move smoothly and wind up being a good experience,” DeSantis said.
The doses are in addition to the 325,000 the state expects to receive from the federal government this week. Walmart’s allotment is part of the Federal Retail Pharmacy Program, which aims to speed up vaccine distribution by giving doses directly to pharmacies.
Read more at our news partner the South Florida Sun Sentinel.
— Cindy Krischer Goodman / Sun Sentinel
Evictions In Miami-Dade: End Of Moratorium For Businesses, Home Renters Getting Help
Updated Tuesday at 5:47 a.m
Miami-Dade police soon will open the door for commercial evictions, allowing county police to force out businesses behind in their rent for commercial spaces. Local and federal shields remain for residential tenants, and Miami-Dade is dramatically increasing the dollars available for landlords owed back rent during the pandemic.
Mayor Daniella Levine Cava, who oversees county police, said Monday that officers will resume processing commercial evictions on March 5. That ends a local moratorium on evictions of stores, offices and other business tenants that had been protected for nearly a year after the former mayor, Carlos Gimenez, ordered police to freeze all evictions in the early days of the coronavirus state of emergency in March 2020.
Businesses aren’t protected from a limited federal ban on residential evictions imposed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), so it was up to county government when to resume commercial evictions.
— By Douglas Hanks and Rene Rodriguez / The Miami Herald
Read more from our news partner at The Miami Herald.
Miami-Dade Trails Other Florida Counties In Vaccinating Seniors For COVID-19 — By A Lot
Updated Tuesday at 5:45 a.m
Despite being the epicenter of severe COVID cases and deaths in Florida, Miami-Dade has vaccinated a smaller percentage of its seniors than the state average, significantly trailing other South Florida counties and metro areas.
The state has been making progress as a whole, with about one-third of Florida seniors having now received at least one dose of the two federally authorized COVID-19 vaccines. But in Miami-Dade, which has suffered the most hospitalizations and deaths from the disease in the state, the percentage of seniors 65 and older who have received at least one dose is closer to 1 in 4.
About 27.6% of people 65 and older have received the vaccine in Miami-Dade, according to epidemiologist Mary Jo Trepka, a professor at Florida International University.
— By Ben Conarck / The Miami Herald
Read more from our news partner at The Miami Herald.
