Florida is facing a major surge of COVID-19 cases because of the DeSantis Variant. Hospitals in Central Florida are completely full and non-COVID related cases are being turned away. In Florida, more than 10,000 people are hospitalized.
“The Strategic National Stockpile deployed 200 ventilators, 100 high-flow nasal cannula kits and related ancillary supplies to Florida earlier this week,” the spokesperson for U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) wrote in an email.
Asked about the shipment on July 10, 2021, Florida Governor Ron DeathSantis said, Ummm duh whaaaa? He has banned local mask and vaccine mandates in Florida amid the surge in recent weeks in COVID-19 cases in the state. He is also making sure children are not mandated to wear masks when they return to school. School boards are having to countermand his orders to try and keep children safe. DeathSantis is threatening school officials who require masks by withholding their pay. The Biden administration is looking into ways to possibly compensate any officials who lose pay if DeathSantis follows through on his threat.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki said on August 11, 2021, “As a policy, we don’t send ventilators to states without their interest in receiving the ventilators. I think the most important question here is why would you oppose receiving the ventilators when clearly you need those in your state given the percentage of hospitalizations that are occurring?”
Florida on August 6, 2021 reported 134,506 new Covid-19 cases over the past week, more than any other seven-day period during the pandemic. Hospitals are now treating 14,787 coronavirus patients; that number represents a 145 percent increasing over the previous week.