Florida Governor Ron Desantis is blaming increased testing for the spike in coronavirus cases in the state. Florida reached a new record high on Saturday with 4,000 new reported cases.
The spike comes as Florida earlier than most states began to reopen the state after weeks of stay at home orders that closed non essential businesses. Florida’s reopening came with an agreement with the NBA to resume the season in Orlando at Disney’s Theme Park.
Florida currently has more than 90,000 confirmed cases with just over 3,000 deaths. Desantis also recently blamed migrant workers and low income communities for the spike due to an inability to socially distance.
“You do hear reports of people who are just jam packed in there and that’s just not the way we’re going to do things,” DeSantis said according to Politico.
The NBA season has been paused since March 11 after players started to get infected with the virus and cases across the U.S. started to shoot up. After 3 months off from the game, the NBA unrolled the planned return to finish the season.
Action will take place in Orlando starting July 30 and is expected to conclude in late September. The league invited 22 teams to play in Orlando. Once the season concludes, the 2020-2021 season is expected to start in December.
With players reporting to Orlando in a few weeks, the NBA acknowledged that they are concerned about the recent spike. NBA officials specifically were concened about Wal Disney staffers who could be infected. According to Yahoo Sports, staffers would not be regularly tested for COVID-19. The NBA says it is monitoring the situation in Florida but as of now has no plans to reverse course on getting back to play.
