Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is lifting capacity restrictions on restaurants and other businesses, even as the state reports hundreds of Covid-19 deaths a week.

Speaking Friday in St. Petersburg, the Republican governor also said he would make it harder for local governments to institute their own restrictions, which have gone above and beyond the state’s rules. The measures are part of his move into the so-called third phase of reopening.

“The order that I’m signing today will guarantee restaurants operate, will not allow closures,” DeSantis said.

He said all restaurants can stay open at 50% of capacity, and it would be incumbent upon local governments to justify any caps below 100%.

Florida’s Covid-19 cases, hospitalizations and deaths have all dropped sharply from the surge that started in the Sun Belt in late June and persisted through August. But the state continues to report about 700 Covid-19 deaths a week, and there’s still much uncertainty about the consequences of schools reopening and other more relaxed measures.

DeSantis said he was cognizant of the possibility of another wave, but said it was important to give businesses predictability, insisting the reopening wouldn’t go in reverse.

Vulnerable Elderly
Throughout much of the pandemic, he has argued for a targeted approach to protect the highly vulnerable 70-and-older population. Still, the surge that hit in recent months showed that the insidious virus often starts spreading among the young and finds its way into older populations, including Florida’s large nursing home and assisted-living communities.

“We’re prepared if we see an increase,” DeSantis said. “We’re not closing anything going forward.”

It wasn’t immediately clear what DeSantis’s measures would mean for Miami-Dade County, Florida’s most populous and hardest-hit, where bars and clubs remain completely shuttered and indoor dining remains capped at 50% of capacity.

Around the time DeSantis was speaking, Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez tweeted to note that the county’s positivity rate for new cases had “inched slightly” up to 5.4%. Until Monday, the measure had made an 11-day run under 5%. It has now surpassed that threshold in three of the past four days.

“We can’t let our guard down now that more of us are out in public,” Gimenez said.

This article was provided by Bloomberg News.