Florida this week was tied for the lowest COVID-19 case rate in the United States, even though it does not have any state-wide masking or vaccine mandates, said Gov. Ron DeSantis’s office.
“Without mandates or lockdowns, COVID-19 cases in Florida have decreased 90 percent since August,” DeSantis said in a Wednesday update. “In addition to cases, hospitalizations have plummeted in our state. This has been accomplished by making monoclonal antibody treatments and vaccines widely available throughout our state while protecting Floridians from government overreach.”
Data provided by the Florida Department of Health shows that the state has nine cases per 100,000 people and is tied with Hawaii for being the state with the lowest case rate. U.S. territories such as the U.S. Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, American Samoa, and the Northern Mariana Islands had lower case rates, while the United States average is 21 cases per 100,000 people, according to the data.
Since August, according to DeSantis’s office, COVID-19 cases in school children decreased by about 87 percent while cases in adults between the ages of 18 and 24 decreased by 93 percent.
This year, DeSantis has sought to impose fines on businesses and institutions that impose COVID-19 vaccine mandates, and, among other directives, he’s also moved to bar schools from requiring that students wear masks on the premises.
But the Republican governor’s stance against vaccine mandates and masking has triggered significant criticism from the Biden administration and White House health officials. Over the summer, when COVID-19 cases increased in Florida, DeSantis—and his approach toward the pandemic—frequently drew negative headlines.
Health officials in the state said that Florida now has among the lowest COVID-19 cases in the United States. Data provided by the state on Monday shows the case count has dropped for an eighth consecutive week.
The Sunshine once approached 17,000 COVID-19 patients hospitalized at one point. Now, there are fewer than 2,300, according to the Florida Hospital Association.
“We saw a study from the University of Florida that said approximately 80 percent of the population has some type of antibodies now well that’s getting close to herd immunity so that’s exactly where we wanted to get,” Seminole County Emergency Manager Alan Harris told Fox35 earlier this week.
On Thursday, DeSantis and other top state officials filed a lawsuit against President Joe Biden, NASA, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson, and several within the White House Office of Management and Budget and the Department of Defense over the mandate on federal workers and contractors that was announced by the president last month.
The lawsuit argues that NASA and other agencies “frequently [contract] with Florida, has current contractual relationships with Florida, and is and will continue to seek to impose the Biden administration’s unlawful requirements to Florida.”