Florida To Reopen Bars At 50% Capacity

At a roundtable event Thursday, Governor Ron DeSantis said he was receptive to opening bars because “obviously we saw some outbreaks linked to bars in Florida, but my sense is that that behavior would probably have been happening in private residences if it wasn’t there [at bars],” he said, according to the Sun-Sentinel. 

DeSantis also said that many bars have already opened because they are serving food. “I will say that I really look at kind of the observed experience here. And the areas where the bars were serving food: No different in terms of [coronavirus] than areas, like Miami-Dade, that didn’t have that at all. You look at some of the Sun Belt states. Texas, I think, closed the bars entirely. Georgia kept them open. No difference in the epidemic curve.”

DeSantis originally reopened bars across most of the state in early June, but shut them down again later that month when Florida saw a large spike in cases.

New coronavirus cases in Florida have decreased 20% over the past two weeks, but the state’s positivity rate is still high at 13.6%, according to Johns Hopkins.