Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., on Friday criticized the "irrational hysteria" over a surge in coronavirius cases due to the omicron strain.
"Record numbers testing positive for a sore throat isn't a crisis," Rubio tweeted.
"And people in the hospital for car accidents testing positive isn't a surge. The real crisis is the irrational hysteria which has people with no symptoms waiting hours for a test or missing work for 10 days."
His comments come as the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported more than 75,900 new cases of COVID-19 in Florida Friday.
That tally raises the 7-day average daily to 42,600, which is twice as high as it was at the peak of this summer's surge when the delta variant fueled a surge of infections in the state.
Friday's report marks a single-day record for the number of new cases in Florida. It breaks the record set a day earlier when more than 58,000 cases were reported in the state.
The omicron variant of the coronavirus has spiked in Florida and across the nation over the past few weeks.
Rubio has long criticized the hysteria over COVID-19.
Last August, he tweeted: "We have media hysteria over Covid "cases" because "bad news" sells But what matters isn't how many people have Covid, what matters is how many people are seriously ill The real story here is how for the fully vaccinated the risk of serious illness appears to be near zero."