The mayor of Miami, Florida, said that the new wave of the coronavirus rippling throughout his city is growing exponentially as the city sets “record after record” for new cases.
Mayor Francis Suarez said on Sunday that the city of Miami implemented several changes to try to stop the spread of coronavirus, including a mandate on the use of face masks and the closure of several public beaches in Miami-Dade County. He expressed concern about the rise in cases after the city recently set a daily record of 1,300 new cases.
“It’s clear the growth is exponential at this point. You know, we’ve been breaking record after record after record the last couple of weeks. We instituted about a week ago a mask-in-public rule, and we also increased the severity of penalties for businesses that don’t follow the rules,” he told ABC’s This Week.
“Our county closed down the beaches for the July 4th weekend in the hopes these rules will have an impact, a positive impact. It takes a little bit of time to find out exactly, but we’re obviously very closely monitoring hospitalizations, and we’re very, very closely monitoring the death rate, which are lagging indicators that give us, you know, the impression we have to take much stricter measures,” he added.
Suarez noted that some people in Miami were “a little bit upset” by the new regulations that closed beaches and required the use of masks, but overall, people have been complying with the new regulations.
“We are hopeful that the measures we’re putting into place will prevent us from having to put more dramatic measures over the course of this week,” he said.
Florida is one of several states experiencing a spike in coronavirus cases, along with Texas, California, and Arizona.
