Florida Gov. DeSantis Disagrees With Feds on Coronavirus Spread

Federal officials listed Florida among the places where there is community spread of coronavirus, but Gov. Ron DeSantis disagrees. 

“As Governor DeSantis stated [Monday], there is no community spread of COVID-19 in Florida at this time," Helen Aguirre Ferré, the governor's spokeswoman, told The Miami Herald in response to a comment from Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. 

Fauci on Tuesday said that Florida, along with Washington state, California, and New York all have reports of community spread, meaning the risk is higher of contracting COVID-19 there than in other parts of the country. 

Ferré said that it is "a question for Dr. Fauci and CDC,” about why Florida would be referred to as a place where community spread has occurred.

DeSantis on Monday said that several cases of coronavirus reported in Broward County tied to a cruise service company in Port Everglades were not evidence of community spread. 

So far, 15 people in Florida have tested positive for the coronavirus, and most of them had traveled overseas. However, there are four patients who have no history of visiting places where there have been virus outbreaks, according to the Florida Department of Health. 

Ferré said three of those people, in Broward County, worked for the same company. It is unclear on how another man from Manatee County may have contracted the disease. 

Meanwhile, two patients in the state, both in their 70s, have died from complications of the virus. 

After Florida's health officials announced the state's first two "presumptive positive" test result for the virus, DeSantis and other officials traveled on a press tour. The governor spoke about a Manatee County man in his 60s with several medical conditions who had tested positive in a Sarasota hospital where he had been for five days before the diagnosis was made, raising quesitons about whether he'd contracted the disease there.  

• US Cases Top 1,000; Containment Efforts Boosted
• National Stockpile Hasn't Significantly Refilled Face Masks Since 2009