Coronavirus Live Updates: Miami-Dade Schools Will Make Masks Optional For Outdoor, Socially Distanced Activities

WLRN 91.3 FM | By WLRN News

Published May 19, 2021 at 6:07 AM EDT

Jenna Ramkhelawan, 12, left, gives a thumbs-up, along with UM Health LPN Delores Fye, after receiving her first dose of the Pfizer vaccine on Tuesday, May 18, 2021. Jenna received her vaccine at a pop-up site run by UHealth’s Pediatric Mobile Unit in an effort to provide free COVID-19 vaccines to uninsured and underprivileged children and parents. The pop-up site was at the Center for Haitian Studies in Little Haiti on Tuesday.

This post will be updated today, Wednesday, May 19, and through the week with the latest information on COVID-19 in South Florida.

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QUICK UPDATES

Miami-Dade Schools Will Make Masks Optional For Outdoor, Socially Distanced Activities

Updated Wednesday at 6:04 a.m.

Effective immediately, Miami-Dade County Public Schools is making masks optional only for outdoor, socially distanced activities. All other COVID-19 protocols will stay in place for the last two weeks of school.

Looking forward to the fall, the nation’s fourth-largest school district may make masks optional for the 2021-22 school year.

At Tuesday’s ad hoc medical and public health experts task force meeting, Superintendent Alberto Carvalho said he is “reasonably comfortable and confident we can announce a voluntary masking approach” for the next school year.

— By Colleen Wright / The Miami Herald

Read more from our news partner at The Miami Herald

Judge Refers Florida’s Cruise Line Suit Against CDC To Mediator

Updated Wednesday at 6:00 a.m.

Cruise lines, their customers, the state of Florida and the U.S. government will have to wait a little longer to learn whether a federal order keeping ships idled can stand.

A Tampa federal judge overseeing the state’s civil case against the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention referred the matter to a mediator Tuesday with instructions to hear the positions of both sides before June 1.

Mediators are typically summoned in the hopes of coaxing both sides into settling their differences outside the court.

— By David Lyons / The South Florida Sun Sentinel

Read more from our news partner at The South Florida Sun Sentinel.