A recap of some of the biggest news from around the state that impacts you in South Florida.
Florida’s coronavirus trend has improved for four consecutive weeks. With 11,423 new COVID-19 cases reported, the weekly trend for new cases remains the lowest since December 30th.
As of Thursday’s report from the Florida Department of Health, approximately 1.6 million Floridians have been vaccinated. For the fourth time in five days, Florida fell short of the state’s goal of 60,000 vaccinations daily. Plus, more Floridians received the 2nd dose than the first dose. This underscores Governor DeSantis’s concerns that the state isn’t receiving first dose vaccines as rapidly as in previous weeks. A total of 1,319,822 Floridians have received the first dose and 247,330 Floridians have completed the two-dose schedule.
In other news, Governor DeSantis proposed a record-setting $96.6 billion budget as he provided an optimistic view of Florida’s economic recovery from the pandemic. Last year, DeSantis’s top priorities were education and the environment. They still remain top priorities with proposed record spending in both areas. Aside from general increases in existing government programs, the budget dubbed “Florida Leads” calls for the creation of a Resilient Florida grant system that would fund local government efforts to combat sea-level rise.
Moving on to sports, approximately 1,500 fans were allowed to attend the Miami Heat game Thursday night at the American Airlines Arena. It’s the first-time fans were allowed to attend a Heat game since the onset of the pandemic. It also featured the first use of K-9's trained to detect COVID-19. The K-9's began to scan attendees approximately three hours in advance. It doesn’t appear as though any fans were determined to have been detected as COVID carriers by the K-9's.
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